In February, four months after being released from federal prison, former Republican congressman George Santos took to social media to express his enthusiasm about attending President Trump's upcoming State of the Union address."I'm going to be there for the State of Union in the gallery, guys," Santos said in a video he posted to X a day before the president's remarks.At the time, traders on the prediction market site Kalshi were placing millions of dollars worth of bets on who would attend.Santos' video confirming his presence sent odds soaring.But he didn't show up."Watching SOTU from an airport tv was not part of the plan! FML," Santos wrote on X, using slang for a more coarse way of saying, "screw my life."He posted the message as Trump was speaking, making those same odds in the Kalshi market plummet.What Santos didn't say was that he had already placed bets on Kalshi that he was not going to appear at the State of the Union address, according to three people with direct knowledge of his trades who were not authorized to speak publicly.
They say Santos misled the public and turned a profit based on that deception in the tens of thousands of dollars.Kalshi detected Santos' trades, froze his account and referred the case to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice, according to a person familiar with Kalshi's investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly.Neither the CFTC nor the Justice Department returned requests for comment.Reached by NPR, Santos said, "Well, that's news to me," when asked about the insider trading probe underway into his activity on Kalshi.Santos said, "I'm not saying yes, I'm not saying no" when NPR asked if he had a Kalshi account.He went on to say the co-founder of Kalshi, Luana Lopes Lara, is "a fellow Brazilian" whom he personally knows.He said he would call her to get to the bottom of whether an investigation had been launched.Santos promised to update NPR on how the call went.
He did not respon...