The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is examining prediction-market trades linked to former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger that included a bet on whether he would receive a presidential pardon, according to Politico reporting cited by Decrypt. The trades were placed on Kalshi in December 2024 and January 2025, shortly before President Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon to Kinzinger and other members of the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
What the investigation concerns
One of the contracts in question asked whether Kinzinger himself would receive a presidential pardon. A second contract concerned whether Biden would issue preemptive pardons before leaving office. Biden granted those pardons in his final hours in January 2025, including protections for Kinzinger and other members of the House select committee.
Kalshi is a prediction market, a platform where users trade contracts whose value depends on whether a future event happens. Its rules prohibit users from betting on contracts in which they are direct participants. The CFTC, which regulates the markets, also bars the use of material nonpublic information.
Kinzinger told Politico that he placed roughly 25 trades during the period and that most of them lost money. Screenshots he provided showed a total gain of $823 on the trades connected to the matter. He said he had been out of Congress for two years when he made the bets, was neither a member of Congress nor a candidate, and had no inside information.
He also said he had reviewed Kalshi’s rules before trading. His understanding was that the rules prohibited trading when a user worked for the relevant agency, could influence the outcome or possessed nonpublic information. Kinzinger said he had never discussed the pardons with anyone.
Kalshi’s rules and previous cases
The CFTC and Kalshi both declined to comment to Politico, while Kinzinger said neither had contacted him about the investigation. Kalshi is separately reviewing the transactions.
The exchange has taken action in other cases involving political contracts. In April, it suspended three congressional candidates over bets on their own races. Kalshi also froze former Representative George Santos’s account and referred him to the CFTC and the Justice Department after trades tied to his attendance at the State of the Union. Santos had publicly said he would attend, and Kalshi later banned him for life in late August.
The issue is whether a person connected to an event can trade on an outcome that directly concerns them, even if the person says they had no confidential information or ability to affect the result. Such contracts raise questions about market integrity because participants may have knowledge, influence or incentives that ordinary traders do not.
Kinzinger’s criticism of prediction markets
The investigation has an added dimension because Kinzinger has previously criticized Kalshi’s handling of contracts involving individual politicians. In a Substack post last November, he objected to markets on questions such as which senator would first visit Syria and how individual lawmakers would vote on releasing the Epstein files.
He described markets that allow insiders or legislators to bet on their own conduct as “a corruption time bomb” and said they posed a threat to democracy. Kinzinger now says he is broadly satisfied with the development of Kalshi’s screening process.
Kinzinger, an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, served on the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack. Trump had called for committee members to be jailed. After taking office shortly after Biden signed the pardons, Trump said in a March 2025 Truth Social post that the pardons were “void” and that their recipients were subject to investigation. The White House declined to comment to Politico.
The CFTC’s scrutiny comes as the agency increases its attention on prediction markets. Its staff warned exchanges the previous week that contracts settled by the words or conduct of a named individual should generally be presumed vulnerable to manipulation. That warning followed a $172,000 fine against a former White House teleprompter operator over trades involving markets tied to presidential mentions.
Moneyiar market picture
Moneyiar market data at 09:33-09:34 on October 1, 2026, showed mixed performance among the listed digital assets:
- Cardano (ADA): $0.2474857805, down 0.3% over 24 hours and up 5.79% over seven days.
- Four (FORM): $0.2881787859, down 0.91% over 24 hours and up 0.47% over seven days.
- Ontology Gas (ONG): $0.0936351808, down 1.55% over 24 hours and up 6.07% over seven days.
These figures are Moneyiar data and are separate from the CFTC investigation and the Kalshi contracts.
