White House Teleprompter Operator Fined $172K for Insider Trading Using Trump Speech Drafts

The man who loaded Donald Trump's words onto the teleprompter has been ordered to hand over £126,900 ($172,539) after betting on which of those words the president would actually say.

Gabriel Perez, who operated the teleprompter for Trump since 2016, used advance sight of presidential speeches to trade contracts on the prediction market Kalshi, according to a settlement announced by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Friday 28 August 2026.

Regulators described the conduct as insider trading and said Perez had breached the trust placed in him by his government employer. He has surrendered his profits, paid a civil penalty and accepted a three-year ban from the markets he exploited.

The Bets Placed on a President's Words

The trades exploited a peculiar corner of the prediction-market business.

Perez dealt in what the CFTC called presidential 'mention market' contracts, wagers on whether Trump would utter particular words or phrases during an address, and he placed them between December 2025 and February 2026 while still working at the White House.

The regulator was blunt about how he gained his edge. In its enforcement announcement, the CFTC said Perez had misappropriated material, non-public information obtained through his government job and used it for personal benefit, acting in breach of his duty of trust and confidence.

His role gave him sight of speech drafts before delivery, which is precisely the information those contracts were designed to test.

The financial terms are set out in the order.

Perez must surrender trading profits of $107,539.02 and pay a civil monetary penalty of £47,800 ($65,000), a figure the commission said reflected a substantial discount awarded for what it termed his exemplary cooperation with the investigation. He is barred from trading for three years and ordered to cease and desist from further breaches of the Commodity Exchange Act.

How Kalshi's Own Surveillance Caught Him

The case did not begin with a government tip-off. Kalshi has said its analysts noticed unusual betting patterns in its mention markets in March 2026, the contracts through which users predict whether a speaker will deploy particular terms such as country names or campaign slogans.

The platform then traced the account. Kalshi told the BBC it had used account data to establish that the trader was a federal employee who operated White House teleprompters, and it referred the activity to the regulator.

Robert DeNault, the company's head of enforcement, wrote on X that a Kalshi surveillance investigation had caught a White House staffer engaged in prohibited trading.

DeNault also added that it did not matter who a trader was; breaking the rules or federal law would bring consequences.

The company has an obvious commercial interest in policing this behaviour.

Kalshi noted in a statement in July that the words of political leaders such as presidents and central-bank chairs move billions of dollars across currency, oil and equity markets, which is what gives advance knowledge of a script its value and why insider trading on it threatens the integrity of the market itself.

Perez is not the only trader the platform has pursued.

In February 2026, Kalshi announced it had closed two insider-trading investigations of its own, fining an employee of the YouTube star MrBeast £15,000 ($20,398) and imposing a two-year suspension over bets tied to streaming milestones, and handing a five-year ban and a smaller penalty to a long-shot candidate for California governor who had breached its rules for politicians.

Exchanges hold the power to levy such penalties under authority granted by the CFTC, and the cases point to a young industry trying to prove it can police the information advantages its own contracts create.

A White House Aide Undone by the Job

Perez was not a peripheral figure. He served as a technical assistant to the president and had run Trump's teleprompter since 2016, a role that placed him among the small group of staff who see a speech before an audience does.

The White House moved once his trading became public.

Perez was placed on leave in July as the investigation proceeded, and then press secretary Karoline Leavitt said he would not be returning to his post, describing the conduct as unfortunate and a disgrace. He no longer works for the federal government, according to the settlement reporting.

The episode has already changed practice inside the building.

The White House Management Office sent a letter to aides in July reminding them of their obligations around non-public information, a direct response to the discovery that a staffer had been converting the president's draft remarks into a personal revenue stream.

Neither Perez nor the White House offered comment when the settlement was announced.

An operator paid to put words in front of the president ended up paying for knowing them first.