Gabriel Perez, the White House technical aide who operated Trump’s teleprompter
since 2016, is alleged to have used advance access to speech text to place
prediction-market wagers on which words Trump would use, netting over $100,000
from bets on more than a dozen speeches. Prediction-market operators flagged the
trading to the CFTC; investigators say Perez sometimes exited bets when Trump
deviated from scripts. Perez is negotiating a potential settlement with
regulators that could include disgorgement and a commitment to stop such
trading; the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan declined to open a criminal probe. The
White House says it is cooperating with the CFTC.
