HAND IT OVER

Fired Trump Goon Ordered to Pay Up After Insider Trading Bust

The longtime White House aide has gone from making $175,000 annually to owing the federal government six figures.

A longtime White House aide caught using insider knowledge to pocket thousands on a prediction market has been ordered to pay back all his profits—plus a healthy fine.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced Friday that Gabriel Perez, who spent a decade as Trump’s teleprompter operator before he was fired from his cushy White House role this summer, must pay a total of $172,000 for his illegal trades on Kalshi.

That sum breaks down to Perez paying back $107,539.02 in profits plus a civil monetary penalty of $65,000—a figure that the CFTC writes in a news release is “a substantial discount under the Division of Enforcement’s new cooperation advisory because of Perez’s exemplary cooperation.”

Perez, who was making $175,000 annually as a “Deputy Assistant to the President and Technical Adviser,” was fired by Trump in July. He was one of the president’s longest-serving aides, having been hired by Trump during his first campaign for president in 2016.

Now, Perez is out of a job in the White House and is barred from making any trades for three years.

“Perez agreed to cease and desist from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations,” the news release said. “Under the order, a three-year trading ban is imposed on Perez.”

NO DICE

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A federal probe was launched into Perez’s Kalshi trades after moderators flagged unusual activity on the platform’s “Mentions” market, where gamblers wager on whether specific words or topics are mentioned during a public speech or national broadcast.

Kalshi bars users from placing bets based on information obtained as part of their work. Perez, who was often the last person to see Trump’s speeches before loading them into a teleprompter, was accused of using his special access to gamble on what the president would or would not say in a given speech.

Among the speeches Perez was accused of profiting big on were the president’s primetime speech in December, his remarks at the World Economic Forum in January, his State of the Union address in February, and his remarks during a Medal of Honor ceremony in March.

Perez was hired by Trump’s campaign in 2016 after staffers Googled “teleprompters” and the company he worked for in New York came up, Politico reported in 2020. Despite being hired by chance, ABC News reported this summer that Perez had become one of the president’s trusted aides and would often take last-second edits to public remarks from Trump himself.

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That relationship did not help Perez keep his job after his insider trading scandal blew up. Former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump personally decided to put Perez on leave and found his trades to be “deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace.”

While Perez knew what the president was supposed to say in his speeches, sources told ABC he sometimes changed his wagers mid-speech whenever the president got off topic—something the 80-year-old Trump is known to do frequently.

Kalshi has since updated its policies to require users to disclose their employer.

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Josh FialloBreaking News Reporter

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