A veteran White House technical aide who has managed President Donald Trumps teleprompter since his 2016 campaign has been sidelined amid allegations that he exploited privileged access to presidential speeches to profit from online political wagers.
According to the Gateway Pundit, federal regulators are now in settlement discussions with Gabriel Gabe Perez over claims that he quietly amassed more than $100,000 on the prediction platform Kalshi by leveraging his insider knowledge of what the president would say in public remarks. As reported by ABC News and cited in the complaint, Perez allegedly used his high-level security clearance and direct access to draft speeches to place targeted bets on Kalshis Mentions market, a niche but fast-growing corner of the financial world where users gamble on whether specific words, phrases, or topics will be spoken during a live address.
These markets, marketed by some on the left as a harmless form of civic engagement, allow users to wager on whether terms such as rigged election, fake news, or various geopolitical buzzwords will be uttered by the president at the podium. Because Perez was the staffer responsible for loading the final text onto the teleprompter, investigators say he was uniquely positioned to know in advance exactly which phrases President Trump was scheduled to deliver before the American public heard them.
According to ABC News, citing sources familiar with the probe, regulators uncovered instances in which Perez allegedly altered or canceled bets in real time when President Trump deviated from the prepared script. In some cases, Perez is said to have backed out of wagers mid-speech after the president skipped a section that contained a word Perez had bet would be mentioned, behavior that raised immediate red flags for Kalshis internal compliance team.
Gabriel Perez, a technical assistant to the president who has been operating Trumps teleprompter since 2016, is in talks with federal regulators to settle allegations he used his inside knowledge of the presidents speeches to win more than $100,000, the sources said. According to the sources, Kalshi alerted its regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to the suspicious activity on its Mentions market, where users can bet on whether specific words, phrases or topics are uttered during a public speech. The platform, which has been aggressively lobbying for broader regulatory approval of political betting, moved quickly once the pattern was detected.
Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC, and we are cooperating and assisting regulators, Kalshis lead lawyer, Bobby DeNault, said in a statement provided to ABC News. That cooperation appears to have accelerated the federal response, underscoring how even novel, tech-driven markets are still subject to basic rules against trading on nonpublic information.
According to sources familiar with the investigation, Perez sat for an interview with regulators in recent months and acknowledged some of the trades. At some point during the investigation, the sources said the CFTC alerted federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who declined to open a criminal investigation, suggesting that while the conduct may have been unethical and violative of civil rules, it did not rise to the level of a prosecutable crime under current statutes.
Regulators at the CFTC have expressed a willingness to settle with Perez, and have discussed terms with him that would require Perez to give back his profits and refrain from making similar trades, according to sources familiar with the ongoing discussions. Such an outcome would fit a broader pattern in Washington, where bureaucrats and staffers who misuse insider access often face administrative or civil penalties rather than jail time, even as ordinary Americans are held to stricter standards in financial markets.
The White House has emphasized that employees are prohibited from using nonpublic information for personal financial gain and reiterated that all staff are expected to comply with strict ethics rules. That message reflects a longstanding conservative insistence that public service is a trust, not a personal enrichment opportunity, and that any abuse of that trust undermines confidence in the presidency itself.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Thursday that President Trump was personally briefed on the matter. Obviously, Im aware of the report. The President is, too. I spoke with him about it. He believes its deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace.
Leavitt added that Perez is cooperating with the CFTC investigation and has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the outcome of the inquiry. The individual that was cited in that report is complying with the CFTC but has been put on paid administrative leave. So there will be a teleprompter operator tonight, of course, but it will not be the one, unfortunately, in that story.
For a president whose base has long demanded accountability from the permanent political class, the episode is likely to reinforce calls for tighter ethics enforcement and clearer rules around emerging financial products like political prediction markets. While regulators move toward a settlement and the White House replaces a trusted aide on the teleprompter, the broader question remains whether Washington will finally impose real consequences on those who treat public office as a shortcut to private gain.
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