Trump Teleprompter Operator Suspended Over $100,000 Speech-Betting Scheme

A veteran White House technical assistant has been placed on unpaid administrative leave following revelations that he allegedly used advanced access to President Donald Trump's scripts to net roughly $100,000 on a financial prediction market.

Gabriel Perez, who has managed Trump's teleprompters since the 2016 campaign, is under federal investigation for placing insider wagers on the specific terminology, themes, and catchphrases the president would use during major national broadcasts. The activity occurred on Kalshi, a regulated prediction platform featuring "mention markets" that allow users to financially back the occurrence of specific vocabulary in public domains.

The White House moved swiftly to distance itself from the staffer after the details surfaced. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Trump personally made the call to suspend Perez without pay, calling the situation "deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace." Leavitt noted that Perez would no longer be employed by the administration and added that another operator was brought in for Thursday night’s scheduled national address on election integrity.

"The White House has strict ethics guidelines that we expect all staffers and officials to follow," White House spokesperson Davis Ingle emphasized. Leavitt mirrored this sentiment, reinforcing that the administration maintains “extremely strict ethical guidelines with respect to issues like this.”

Surveillance Flagged Unusual Script Bets

According to sources familiar with the matter, Perez's position granted him final clearance on almost all of the president's prepared remarks, including high-stakes addresses such as the State of the Union, a December primetime broadcast, an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and a Medal of Honor ceremony in March. This close proximity allowed him to capitalize on last-minute edits that were sometimes directly handed down by the president.

However, the trades caught the attention of Kalshi's internal tracking algorithms, which noticed anomalous, highly accurate betting activity focused on political speeches. The exchange successfully froze over $90,000 in accumulated wins before the funds could be cleared for withdrawal.

"Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC, and we are cooperating and assisting regulators,"stated Robert DeNault, Kalshi's head of enforcement. 

DeNault had previously cautioned the public about the legal boundaries of prediction markets, stating in May:

"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."

The Teleprompter Risk Factor

The betting dynamic was heavily complicated by Trump's well-documented tendency to abandon his prepared scripts. The president has frequently joked about his teleprompter usage, saying during a January speech to the Detroit Economic Club:

"You know, when you go up here, you take a big chance, especially me because I go off teleprompter about 80% of the time,"

Investigators reportedly uncovered instances where Perez watched the live stream and actively pulled out of specific bets mid-speech the moment the president chose to bypass paragraphs containing the targeted phrases.

While the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) continues to hash out a potential settlement that would force Perez to forfeit his earnings and accept a ban on future trading, criminal liabilities appear to have been avoided. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan reportedly evaluated the findings but opted against opening a formal criminal case. Perez has reportedly been fully cooperative during his interviews with the regulatory body.

The incident drops into a broader legal grey area as the popularity of prediction platforms accelerates. The Department of Justice recently launched its first-ever insider trading prosecutions tied to these venues, targeting a special forces soldier who wagered on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and a Google employee who allegedly utilized proprietary data to bet on search trends. Separately, disgraced ex-congressman George Santos is facing scrutiny over trades regarding his own attendance at the State of the Union.

Trump himself has historically expressed mixed feelings about the shifting landscape, remarking in April on the global rise of betting:

“Well the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino, and you look at what's going on all over the world in Europe and every place they're doing these betting things. I was never much in favor of it. I don't like it conceptually, but it is what it is."

Despite those personal reservations, Trump acknowledged the competitive need for American platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket to function so the country is not "left out in the cold." His own firm, Trump Media and Technology Group, even signaled plans last October to explore its own prediction market products.