Gabriel Perez, the White House staffer who ran President Trump's teleprompter since 2016, is out of the federal government after allegedly pocketing more than $100,000 betting on the contents of Trump's speeches, and the White House is calling it "a disgrace."

Perez's departure came less than two weeks after ABC News reported he was negotiating a settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over allegations that he used his advance access to presidential remarks to place winning wagers on the prediction market platform Kalshi. A White House official confirmed to the Associated Press that Perez "no longer works in the federal government," though whether he resigned or was fired remains unclear.

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle declined to say whether Perez was terminated. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who had earlier announced that Trump directed Perez be placed on unpaid administrative leave, offered the administration's sharpest public statement on the matter.

Leavitt told reporters:

"He believes it is deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace."

She added, in remarks carried by the Washington Examiner: "He will now no longer be working at the White House, so I think that answers all the questions on this matter."

Perez allegedly bet on more than a dozen Trump speeches in three months

The scheme, as described by investigators, was straightforward. Perez had access to Trump's prepared remarks before each speech. He allegedly used that knowledge to wager on Kalshi, a regulated prediction market where users can bet on real-world outcomes, including the specific words a president will use in a given address.

Over a three-month stretch, Perez allegedly placed bets tied to more than a dozen presidential appearances. Those included Trump's January speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the February State of the Union address, and a Medal of Honor ceremony in March. Investigators found that Perez backed out of wagers mid-speech when Trump skipped sections of his prepared remarks, sections that contained words Perez had bet would be used.

That pattern is what caught Kalshi's attention. The platform's internal surveillance team flagged the suspicious trading activity and referred it to the CFTC. Robert DeNault, Kalshi's head of enforcement, told Fox News: "Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC after an exchange investigation."

Perez allegedly won more than $100,000 through the trades, though the New York Post reported that more than $90,000 in profits had been frozen by Kalshi before regulators stepped in. Perez acknowledged some of the trades in an interview with regulators and is reportedly cooperating with the CFTC investigation.

Manhattan prosecutors passed on criminal charges

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan were notified of the matter but declined to open a criminal investigation. That decision leaves the CFTC, the agency that oversees commodities and derivatives markets, as the primary enforcement body. Perez is currently negotiating a settlement with the commission, though the terms and status of those talks have not been disclosed.

A CFTC spokesperson said the agency could not comment on whether an investigation exists, a standard response that neither confirms nor denies the probe. The gap between what regulators will say publicly and what multiple news outlets have reported leaves the full scope of the investigation an open question.

Kalshi's own trading rules bar users from participating in a contract if they are an employee of the relevant source agency, hold material nonpublic information about the contract, or have the ability to influence the outcome. The platform publishes an accompanying reference document, 899 pages long, detailing those prohibitions. Perez, as the man loading the president's words onto the screen, would appear to have checked all three boxes.

Leavitt framed the situation bluntly: "This individual unfortunately violated the plan, and therefore he's paying the consequences."

Prediction markets face a trust problem Washington hasn't solved

The Perez case exposes a vulnerability that prediction markets and their regulators have been slow to address. Platforms like Kalshi have grown rapidly, offering contracts on everything from election outcomes to economic data releases to, as this case demonstrates, the precise language a president will use in a speech. The CFTC approved Kalshi's event contracts after a prolonged legal fight, but the regulatory framework assumes participants are trading on publicly available information and informed judgment, not inside knowledge.

When a low-level staffer with a teleprompter laptop can turn advance access into six figures on a regulated exchange, the guardrails look thin. Kalshi's surveillance system caught the activity, which is to the platform's credit. But the fact that Perez allegedly placed bets across more than a dozen speeches over three months before anyone intervened raises fair questions about how long such a scheme could have continued undetected on a less vigilant platform.

The broader political landscape in Washington is already shaped by questions of trust and accountability. This episode adds another dimension: whether the federal workforce's access to nonpublic information, from speech drafts to policy deliberations, creates insider-trading risks that current law barely contemplates.

Perez had been a fixture in Trump's orbit for a decade, operating the teleprompter since the 2016 campaign. His role was technical and behind-the-scenes, the kind of position that rarely draws public scrutiny. That anonymity may have been part of what made the alleged scheme possible, and what made it so easy for the White House to cut ties once it surfaced.

The administration moved quickly once the allegations became public. Trump ordered the unpaid leave. Leavitt delivered the condemnation. And within two weeks of the ABC News report, Perez was gone. Whatever internal review the White House conducted, the result was unambiguous: Perez was out. The White House has not indicated whether any broader review of staff access to sensitive information is underway, or whether other employees have been examined in connection with prediction market activity.

In a capital where major figures can vanish from public view with little explanation, the Perez case at least produced a clear outcome: the man who allegedly gamed the system lost his job. Whether the CFTC settlement will carry real financial penalties, or whether the regulatory framework will be tightened to prevent the next Gabriel Perez, remains to be seen.

The case also lands at a moment when the Trump administration has emphasized transparency and accountability across the executive branch. Perez's swift removal suggests the White House understood the optics immediately: a staffer enriching himself off the president's own words is indefensible, regardless of party.

Accountability in government shouldn't depend on a prediction market's fraud-detection algorithm catching what the government itself missed. If a teleprompter operator can exploit the system this easily, the system needs fixing, not just the operator.