Former Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger placed roughly 25 trades on the prediction market platform Kalshi between December 2024 and January 2025 across two markets: whether Biden would pardon Kinzinger and whether Biden would issue preemptive pardons. The trades netted him a net profit of $823, according to screenshots he himself provided in September. Now the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating whether those bets crossed a legal line.
According to Bloomberg, sources familiar with the matter say some of Kinzinger’s trades speculated on whether he would personally receive a presidential pardon from Biden, who was in his final weeks in office at the time. The CFTC is probing whether those prediction-market bets involved knowledge tied to an actual pardon outcome. Kinzinger left Congress in January 2023, meaning he held no public office when he placed the wagers, as reported by The Gateway Pundit.
Per Decrypt, Kinzinger wagered roughly $669 in total across the approximately 25 trades and actually lost money on most individual transactions, even though the trades collectively netted him an $823 profit. The outlet's reporting adds exact dollar figures to what had otherwise been described only as alleged bets tied to the pardon speculation.
Kinzinger's Defense: No Inside Knowledge
Kinzinger has pushed back on any suggestion he traded on nonpublic information. In an October statement, he said he had no advance communications with White House officials regarding pardons, though he acknowledged in hindsight, “it was a dumb bet, to bet on myself,” per the same account from The Gateway Pundit. The bets came as Biden issued preemptive pardons in January 2025, during his final hours in office, to Kinzinger and other members of the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack — a panel whose members Donald Trump had repeatedly called to face prosecution or imprisonment, according to Cryptopolitan.
Notably, Cryptopolitan's reporting also points to an irony in Kinzinger's past commentary: in a November 2025 Substack post, he publicly warned that allowing political insiders to gamble on personal or governmental outcomes could foster widespread corruption, having written frequently on political ethics since leaving office.
Exchange Rules Versus Federal Statute
Separate from the federal probe, Kalshi's own platform rules explicitly prohibit users from trading on contracts in which they are named as direct participants. The company has initiated an internal review of Kinzinger's account while sharing data with regulators, according to UA.News. That means Kinzinger's bets may have violated exchange policy regardless of whether he possessed any nonpublic knowledge about the pardon decision. The outlet also notes that Kalshi has updated its policies to restrict politicians, public figures, athletes, and other individuals directly connected to specific outcomes from trading on markets where they hold a personal interest.
This isn't the first time federal regulators have gone after someone for allegedly trading on privileged access to political outcomes. In August, the CFTC fined a former White House teleprompter operator $172,000 after he traded on presidential-mention prediction markets, per FOX Sports Radio.
Congress and States Are Already Fighting Over the Rules
The Kinzinger probe lands amid a broader reckoning over how — and whether — officials and insiders should be allowed to trade on political event contracts at all. Representative Ritchie Torres introduced federal legislation in January that would ban federal officials and government employees from participating in prediction markets where nonpublic information or official actions could influence outcomes, legislation Hoodline covered after a $400K wager tied to a dictator's downfall helped spur congressional interest in closing the regulatory gap.
Meanwhile, the federal government sued Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois in April to defend the CFTC's exclusive regulatory authority over prediction markets, after those states issued cease-and-desist orders and pursued criminal gambling charges against platform operators, according to PBS News. Elsewhere, friction over sports-betting-style contracts has included a Missouri crackdown on Kalshi, Polymarket and Robinhood, and an appeals court ruling that states can police such contracts.
