Kalshi reports George Santos to DOJ and CFTC over self-bets on State of the Union attendance
the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are investigating former U.S. Representative George Santos after prediction-market platform Kalshi reported him for suspicious trading activity, according to multiple reports published Wednesday, June 3, 2026. Santos allegedly placed bets against his own attendance at President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on Kalshi's regulated platform, potentially using non-public knowledge about his own schedule. The referral was triggered after Santos publicly boasted he would attend the address. Santos was already serving a prison sentence on unrelated federal fraud charges at the time of the report. The investigation centers on whether the trading constituted insider trading or market manipulation by a public official.
The joint DOJ-CFTC probe establishes that regulators will treat elected officials' self-directed event-contract bets as potential market manipulation, exposing any future member of Congress who trades on their own behavior on Kalshi to criminal referral.