Trump Aide Placed on Leave for Insider Betting

The White House has placed Gabriel Perez, a teleprompter operator and technical assistant to the president since 2016, on unpaid administrative leave following allegations of insider trading. Federal investigators from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) found that Perez used his access to prepared remarks to place bets on the prediction market platform Kalshi, specifically within its "mentions" market. He reportedly earned over $100,000 across more than a dozen speeches, including the February State of the Union address, a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and a Medal of Honor ceremony.

Kalshi's surveillance team detected the suspicious trading activity and referred the evidence to the CFTC, subsequently freezing over $90,000 in Perez's accounts. Perez is currently in settlement talks with the CFTC to forfeit his profits, though federal prosecutors in Manhattan declined to open a criminal investigation.

President Donald Trump described the situation as "deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace." Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the staffing action and emphasized that the White House maintains strict ethical guidelines. The incident follows a March internal memo that explicitly warned staff against using nonpublic information for prediction market betting.