Warren, Merkley Demand Answers on White House Insider Bets

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined White House teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez more than $172,000 in August over bets on Kalshi about whether specific words would appear in President Donald Trump’s speeches, according to the senators’ letter.

Perez had read the remarks in advance before placing the bets, the senators said. The enforcement action has prompted Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley to demand that the White House explain its response and outline safeguards against staff using confidential information for trading.

What did the senators ask the White House to answer?

The Block reported on November 11 that Warren and Merkley sent a letter to White House Counsel Will Scharf asking what measures were in place to prevent staff from misusing confidential information. The senators wrote that the White House was “not taking meaningful steps to address the ethics concerns.”

Their questions extend beyond Perez. The lawmakers asked the White House to determine whether other staff members had used nonpublic information to profit from betting or trading, and whether employees had received training on handling such information.

They also sought preventive controls beyond written warnings, saying “warning memos alone are insufficient” and calling for mandatory training. That request makes the operational issue broader than one trader: the White House must account for both possible misuse and the internal controls used to prevent it.

How did advance speech access reach prediction markets?

Perez’s teleprompter role gave him access to Trump’s speech text before delivery, while the Kalshi market asked whether particular words would appear in the same remarks. The senators linked advance access directly to trading: information held inside the White House could affect a market tied to the president’s public words.

That distinction matters because the conduct under scrutiny was not ordinary market speculation. It involved a government employee using advance knowledge of presidential remarks, and a CFTC enforcement action followed. The senators’ demands therefore target staff ethics and information handling as well as the conduct of the person who made the bets.

Has similar misuse surfaced before?

Questions about officials with access to confidential government information using it in prediction-market trading have surfaced before. Earlier in the year, an active-duty U.S. soldier was found to have placed bets on Polymarket using classified information related to the arrest of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

That earlier case gives Warren and Merkley a concrete basis for asking whether other employees have traded on material obtained through government work. It also shows why their letter asks the White House to examine other staff, not just Perez, and to verify whether information-handling training occurred.

What could change under Warren’s committee leadership?

Democrats secured majorities in both the House and Senate in the midterm elections. Warren, who is set to become the next chair of the Senate Banking Committee, has said she wants to close regulatory gaps in prediction markets.

Her incoming chairmanship gives that pledge a prospective legislative route. The senators’ letter does not itself change the rules for Kalshi, Polymarket or other prediction markets; any system-wide reform would depend on the White House’s internal response and future congressional action.

The White House has not issued an official response to the letter. As a result, its account of any additional violations, staff training and preventive measures remains unanswered in the public record described by the senators.

The next checkpoint is the White House’s response on wider misuse and training; a second could come as Warren, the incoming Senate Banking Committee chair, turns her regulatory-gap agenda into broader prediction-market rules.