When asked about the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s investigation into Perez after ABC News broke the story on July 16, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “The administrative leave is unpaid. To be very clear, that was a decision by the president.”
Perez is “fully cooperating with the CFTC on the matter,” a source close to the situation told the New York Post.
The teleprompter operator allegedly wagered on whether Trump would utter certain buzzwords, phrases, or tackle specific hot-button topics during more than a dozen speeches, including February’s State of the Union, his World Economic Forum address in Davos, Switzerland, and a primetime December 2025 speech, placing the bets on Kalshi’s “Mentions” market.
Perez will not be working Trump’s prime speech on Thursday, July 16, about the security of U.S. election integrity ahead of the November midterms, as Leavitt told reporters, “there will be a teleprompter operator tonight, of course, but it will not be the one, unfortunately, in that story.”