U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) criticized President Donald Trump for his alleged promise to pardon his White House staff before he leaves office, including the “well-connected” who, in Ossoff’s view, are profiting personally from insider knowledge through prediction markets.
Commenting on a report that Trump said he’d pardon anyone who has come “within 200 feet of the Oval,” Ossoff said, “The president apparently promised pardons for the entire WH staff, which I guess is the kind of thing you do when you run the WH like a casino. Now, maybe the West Wing is too busy placing Kalshi and Polymarket bets on the war to care, but Americans are getting hurt … in Donald Trump’s America, the rich get tax cuts, the well-connected get stock tips, and everybody else makes sacrifices.”
[NOTE: Prior to the U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement, a group of accounts on the prediction market platform Polymarket made, as PBS reported, “highly specific, well-timed trades, betting there’d be an announcement about a halt in fighting for April 7. Some quickly pocketed awards, which amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits combined.”]
Not only are war markets banned on Kalshi, insider trading is also prohibited and investigated thoroughly. The Senator’s hypothetical could not happen on our platform.
— Jaron Zhou (@ZhouJaron) April 13, 2026
Betting executives are pushing back on Ossoff’s comments, with Kalshi brass refuting the Senator’s assertions and working to distinguish their platform from rival Polymarket.
Jaron Zhou, Head of Politics at Kalshi, replied: “Not only are war markets banned on Kalshi, insider trading is also prohibited and investigated thoroughly. The Senator’s hypothetical could not happen on our platform.”
Kalshi’s Benjamin Freeman, replied: “To be clear, you can’t ‘bet on war’ on Kalshi. We don’t have any war, death, or assassination markets. This is misinformation.”
Critics of Kalshi are replying with screenshots of war-related bets including “Will Iran effectively close the Strait of Hormuz for 7+ days?” and “When will traffic at the Strait of Hormuz return to normal?” (The majority of action early Monday predicted a return to normal before July 1.)
— Chris Coleman (@CJCau) April 13, 2026
Former GOP Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) has also criticized Kalshi and used the casino analogy on social media, as seen below.
Kinzinger wrote: “A member of Congress could literally bet on their own vote and profit 10x. A White House aide could bet on a tariff decision before it’s announced. There is ZERO oversight. This isn’t innovation, it’s legalized insider trading on democracy itself. Kalshi is a recipe for disaster…”
[NOTE: Kalshi named the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump, Jr., as a strategic advisor to the company in January 2025.]
A member of Congress could literally bet on their own vote and profit 10x. A White House aide could bet on a tariff decision before it’s announced. There is ZERO oversight. This isn’t innovation, it’s legalized insider trading on democracy itself. Kalshi is a recipe for… pic.twitter.com/tD2J73H2p9
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini)
(@AdamKinzinger) November 25, 2025
