Federal regulators are examining trades by Gabriel Perez, President Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator, after reports that he made about $100,000 betting on whether specific words would appear in Trump speeches on Kalshi. The case puts a sharp regulatory spotlight on “mention markets,” a contract type built around public remarks and vulnerable to nonpublic-information abuse.
What happened in the Gabriel Perez Kalshi case?
Perez, a White House technical assistant who has operated Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, is in settlement talks with federal regulators over allegations that he used advance access to prepared presidential remarks to trade on Kalshi mention markets, ABC News reported on July 16, citing sources familiar with the matter. CBS News separately reported that Perez made more than $100,000 on Kalshi bets related to Trump speeches.
NPR reported that federal regulators were discussing a settlement with Perez over nearly $100,000 in alleged profits from trades on whether Trump would say particular words or phrases during public events. Axios reported that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was investigating the allegations and that Perez had been cooperating with the probe, citing sources familiar with the investigation.
The White House placed Perez on unpaid leave, ABC News reported. A White House spokesperson, Davis Ingle, told ABC News that the administration has strict ethics guidelines and that the staffer was cooperating with the CFTC. The CFTC told Axios it could not confirm or deny an investigation.
Kalshi has said its own surveillance process caught the activity. “Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC after an exchange investigation,” Robert DeNault, Kalshi’s head of enforcement, told Axios. “We have been assisting regulators on this matter and provided evidence we collected, as we do in any referral.” Axios reported that Kalshi froze Perez’s account after flagging the trades, preventing him from capturing most of the profits.
Why do mention markets raise insider-trading questions?
Mention markets let traders buy contracts tied to whether a named person will use a specific word or phrase in a public appearance. For ordinary political markets, the key information may be polling, campaign strategy or public signals. For speech markets, the decisive information can be the prepared remarks themselves, which may be available before delivery to staff, consultants, production workers or other insiders.
That structure is what makes the Perez matter important for the prediction-markets industry. The allegation is not that a trader had a better model of Trump’s rhetoric. It is that a person with work-related access to speech content used that access to trade before the public could hear the remarks.
Federal derivatives law already gives the CFTC authority to police fraud and manipulation on designated contract markets. KalshiEX LLC is registered with the CFTC as a designated contract market, meaning trading on the exchange sits inside the federal commodities-law framework. The central regulatory question is how exchanges prevent traders with direct access to an event’s outcome from using that information in contracts whose value turns on that outcome.
The case also shows why “mention” contracts are a harder compliance problem than many ordinary event contracts. A trader who works on a speech, video, broadcast or earnings-call script may know the relevant result before anyone else. If the exchange lists a contract on that exact language, surveillance has to detect not just suspicious trading, but a trader’s relationship to the source of the information.
What did the CFTC say in its February prediction-markets advisory?
The CFTC’s Division of Enforcement addressed that problem in a February 25, 2026 advisory on prediction markets. The advisory followed two Kalshi enforcement matters involving misuse of nonpublic information and fraud on event contracts, including one involving a YouTube channel editor who likely had advance knowledge of video content.
In that YouTube case, the CFTC advisory said Kalshi found that the trader likely had access to material nonpublic information through an employment relationship or other formal affiliation with the subject of the contract. Kalshi imposed a $20,397.58 financial penalty, consisting of $5,397.58 in disgorgement and a $15,000 penalty, and suspended the trader for two years from direct or indirect access to the exchange.
The advisory also described a separate May 2025 case involving a political candidate who traded on his own candidacy on Kalshi. Kalshi imposed a $2,246.36 financial penalty, including $246.36 in disgorgement and a $2,000 penalty, and suspended the trader for five years. The CFTC said the fact pattern potentially implicated Section 6(c)(1) of the Commodity Exchange Act and Commission Regulation 180.1(a)(1) and (3).
The agency’s February advisory did not ban mention markets. It did, however, state that the CFTC has “full authority to police illegal trading practices” on designated contract markets, including prediction markets. The advisory specifically named misappropriation of confidential information in breach of a duty of trust and confidence, commonly known as insider trading, as conduct the Commission can pursue under federal commodities law.
How does the Perez matter fit the CFTC’s existing framework?
The Perez allegations fit the same enforcement theory described in the February advisory: a person with a formal role connected to the subject of a contract allegedly traded using information unavailable to the public. In the YouTube case, the relevant information was video content. In the Perez matter, according to ABC News, CBS News, NPR and Axios reporting, the relevant information was the content of presidential speeches.
That does not mean the CFTC has brought a public enforcement action against Perez. As of August 15, 2026, the CFTC had not announced a settled order or filed a public complaint naming him. The reported settlement talks matter because they suggest regulators are treating alleged speech-content trading as part of the same insider-trading problem already identified in prediction markets.
For Kalshi, the strongest fact in the record is that its surveillance process appears to have escalated the activity. The company’s statement to Axios says it flagged and referred the trades to the CFTC after an exchange investigation. That aligns with the CFTC’s February posture, which treated exchanges as the first compliance layer while preserving the agency’s ability to investigate and prosecute violations when warranted.
The harder issue is product design. A market can have an enforcement program and still face questions about whether a contract type creates repeat access advantages for insiders. Speech, video and broadcast markets depend on information that is often drafted, edited, rehearsed or produced by a limited group before publication. That makes them natural test cases for how far prediction exchanges can go before event contracts begin to resemble tradable leaks.
What are the stakes for Kalshi and the wider market?
Kalshi’s growth has made its compliance choices more consequential for the entire sector. The company operates inside the U.S. regulated derivatives system, so its handling of insider-trading referrals, suspensions and market design will influence how regulators view similar event-contract products.
The Perez matter also lands while the CFTC is already focused on prediction-market boundaries. On March 12, 2026, the agency sought public comment on an advance notice of proposed rulemaking relating to prediction markets. That process sits alongside active legal and policy fights over political, sports and other event contracts, including the broader question of how much retail-facing event trading federal law should allow.
For market operators, the immediate compliance lesson is concrete: contracts tied to words, scripts and pre-produced content require controls that can identify traders with access to the underlying material before it becomes public. Surveillance after the fact can support referrals and freezes, but it does not eliminate the incentive for insiders to trade first and litigate later.
The next public milestone is whether the CFTC announces a settlement or enforcement action in the Perez matter. Until then, the strongest public record consists of the February 25 CFTC advisory, Kalshi’s statement that it referred the trades, and July 16 reporting from ABC News, CBS News, NPR and Axios that regulators were examining Perez’s alleged use of nonpublic speech information on Kalshi mention markets.
