Trump Staffer FIRED After Betting on President’s Speeches

A longtime White House teleprompter operator for President Donald Trump has been suspended after explosive claims that he used inside access to bet on the president’s speeches and rake in more than $100,000.

The staffer, identified by ABC News as Gabriel Perez, has reportedly worked as a technical assistant to Trump and operated his teleprompter going back to 2016. Now, he is on unpaid administrative leave as federal regulators look into whether he used nonpublic information to cash in on prediction markets tied to Trump’s public remarks.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the stunning situation during Thursday’s briefing.

“The president believes it’s deeply unfortunate and the individual has been put on unpaid administrative leave,” Leavitt said.

She also made it clear that Trump’s next speech would go on as planned.

“There will be a teleprompter operator tonight, of course, but it will not be the one, unfortunately, in that story,” she added.

According to ABC News, sources close to the investigation claimed Perez made more than $100,000 by placing wagers on Kalshi, a prediction market platform where users can bet on real-world events, including whether certain words, phrases or topics will be mentioned in major speeches.

The alleged scheme reportedly centered on Kalshi’s “Mentions” market, where bettors can wager on specific language appearing during public remarks. Federal investigators with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were reportedly alerted after Kalshi flagged suspicious activity.

“Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC, and we are cooperating and assisting regulators,” Kalshi’s chief legal officer, Bobby DeNault, said in a statement.

The CFTC declined to comment, according to the report.

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told ABC News that “The White House has strict ethics guidelines that we expect all staffers and officials to follow.”

“The staffer in question is fully cooperating with the CFTC,” Ingle added.

Leavitt said she was not aware of any other White House officials being under suspicion.

Investigators reportedly found that Perez did not only bet on Trump’s State of the Union address. Sources told ABC News that the teleprompter operator also placed bets on several other speeches across a three-month period, including a December primetime address, Trump’s January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and a March speech during a Medal of Honor ceremony.

The allegations are especially eyebrow-raising because Perez allegedly had unusually close access to Trump’s prepared remarks. According to Trump aides cited in the report, Perez often got the final look at the president’s speeches and was known to take last-minute calls from Trump to make edits before major appearances.

That kind of access could prove valuable on a betting market where a single word or phrase can mean the difference between a loss and a payday.

Still, Trump is famously difficult to predict, even with a script in hand.

The president has long been known for going off-script during rallies, speeches and official remarks, often turning prepared speeches into freewheeling performances that energize supporters and leave critics scrambling to react.

“You know, when you go up here, you take a big chance, especially me, because I go off teleprompter about 80% of the time,” Trump said during remarks at the Detroit Economic Club.

That habit may have complicated the alleged betting activity. ABC News reported that there were instances in which Perez would back out of a bet mid-speech when Trump skipped over a section that included the word Perez had allegedly wagered on.

Sources close to the investigation also claimed Perez sat for an interview in which he acknowledged the betting.

The controversy reportedly had been on the radar for months. In March, a source close to the White House claimed an internal memo warned staffers against using nonpublic information to place bets on prediction markets.

Perez, however, allegedly continued working as a teleprompter operator even after the concerns surfaced.

ABC News also reported that Perez had previously drawn scrutiny from congressional and federal officials over edits made before Trump’s speech surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The case has reportedly been referred to officials in Manhattan, though they declined to open an investigation. According to ABC News, regulators have discussed a possible settlement that would require Perez to return his profits and agree not to make similar bets again.

The strange scandal comes as prediction markets face increased scrutiny over whether people with inside access can exploit private information for personal profit.

“If you have information by virtue of your job or your employment, something that you have a legal duty surrounding, and you have an obligation not to take that, misappropriate it for yourself,” DeNault told ABC News in May.

This is not the first time government employees or insiders have been accused of trying to use privileged information to cash in on prediction markets.

The Department of Justice recently prosecuted special forces soldiers who were accused of betting on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. A Google employee was also accused of using internal company data to bet on users’ searches.

For Trump’s White House, the message from officials was straightforward: the president’s speeches will continue, the staffer has been sidelined, and the administration says it expects strict ethics rules to be followed.

But the details of the case are already raising a stunning question in Washington: How did someone sitting so close to the president’s words allegedly turn the White House teleprompter into a gambling edge?