The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger over prediction-market trades tied to the presidential pardon he received from Joe Biden, according to Politico.
The trades were made through a Kalshi account linked to Kinzinger in December 2024 and January 2025. Kinzinger acknowledged betting on a contract covering whether he would personally receive a pardon and on a separate contract covering whether Biden would issue preemptive pardons before leaving office. He provided screenshots showing a profit of $823 and said he placed roughly 25 trades during that period, losing money on most of them.
Biden granted the preemptive pardons in his final hours in January 2025. Kinzinger, a vocal Trump critic, had been out of Congress since 2023 and denied wrongdoing, saying he had no inside information and had read Kalshi's rules, which he understood to bar trading by those who work for the relevant agency, can influence the outcome, or hold non-public information.
Kalshi prohibits users from betting on contracts in which they are direct participants, and CFTC rules ban the use of material nonpublic information. The exchange is reviewing the transactions. The investigation follows previous Kalshi enforcement actions, including the suspension of three congressional candidates in April over bets on their own races and a lifetime ban for former Representative George Santos over trades tied to his attendance at the State of the Union.
Kinzinger has criticized such markets, calling them “a corruption time bomb” in a Substack post, but now says he is broadly pleased with how Kalshi's screening has developed. The probe also comes as the CFTC sharpens oversight of event contracts, warning exchanges that contracts tied to the words or conduct of named individuals should be presumed open to manipulation.
