The White House has suspended the operator of Donald Trump’s teleprompter amid suspicions that he was using his position to place bets on the speeches of the U.S. president on the prediction platform Kalshi.
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The operator, identified as Gabriel Pérez by the ABC network, had been working with Trump since 2016 and allegedly pocketed nearly $100,000 thanks to his insider information. According to federal authorities’ investigations, he bet on words or topics that the Republican would use during his public appearances.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt explained yesterday that the president was aware of the situation and described the case as a “disgrace.” “The White House has very strict ethical guidelines that explicitly state that this cannot be done,” Leavitt added.
The alert about Pérez’s alleged illicit activities was raised by the Kalshi platform itself, which expressly prohibits betting based on information obtained for work-related reasons. The company explained that its internal monitoring systems identified potentially irregular operations during routine checks and referred the case to federal authorities.
The case comes at a time of increasing scrutiny of prediction markets, which allow betting on future events such as elections, sports competitions, and even wars. The so-called mention markets – where bets are placed on specific terms that public figures will say – have raised particular concern among U.S. regulators due to the risk that people with access to insider information could gain unfair advantages.
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Precisely to strengthen controls, Kalshi announced last June that it would require its users to declare their workplace when operating in sensitive markets and launched a whistleblower channel to detect possible cases of abuse.
The episode also refocuses attention on the ethical issues surrounding the Trump Administration. In recent weeks, the president has faced criticism for the multimillion-dollar profits obtained through his ties to the cryptocurrency world, as well as for his tendency to repeatedly ignore the boundary that should exist between the presidency and family businesses.
Not least, yesterday Trump announced through one of his companies that he will offer banks and investment firms a payment service to access his posts on the Truth Social network in advance.
In response to all these criticisms, the White House states that the magnate complies with all conflict of interest regulations applicable to the office.
