CFTC investigates ex-Rep. Adam Kinzinger over $823 Kalshi bet on his own pardon

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is examining bets that former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger placed on the presidential pardon he was granted.

Kinzinger has defended himself, maintaining that he had been out of office for two years at that point and did not have access to any insider information.

Why is the CFTC investigating wagers placed on Kalshi? 

Three anonymous informants have revealed that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating wagers placed through a Kalshi account tied to former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger in December 2024 and January 2025. Two of those people said Kalshi itself is looking into the same transactions.

The wagers in question were regarding the presidential pardon that Kinzinger received from then president Joe Biden. Kinzinger has been open about the bets he placed saying that he backed one contract on whether he personally would be pardoned and a second on whether Biden would hand out preemptive pardons before leaving the White House.

Screenshots he provided showed that he made a profit of $823. Kinzinger said he placed roughly 25 trades in that stretch and lost money on most of them.

In Biden’s final hours as president in January 2025, he preemptively pardoned Kinzinger and the rest of the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, after Trump had publicly pushed to see them jailed.

Kinzinger retired from the House in 2023 and at the time of placing his bets he was a private citizen. He claims that he had no inside information on the pardons.

He also said he checked the platform first and the rules only restrict anyone who worked for an agency relevant to the wager, could sway an outcome, or held non-public information about it. Kinzinger stated that he felt safe because he had never had a conversation with anyone about the pardons.

Does Kinzinger support prediction platforms?

In a November 25, 2025, Substack post, Kinzinger referred to Kalshi as a “corruption time bomb,” arguing that letting insiders bet on the conduct of individual officials was “a blueprint for legalized corruption.” He stated that the presence of Donald Trump Jr. as a Kalshi strategic advisor was a conflict he called “radioactive.”

Kinzinger has now taken a softer stance, reportedly stating that he is “pleased with how Kalshi has begun screening.”

His feud with Trump, however, is long-running. When Trump declared the committee pardons “void” in a March 2025 Truth Social post and said recipients were “subject to investigation at the highest level,” Kinzinger fired back on X, writing, “bring it on, dude.”

Kinzinger is not the first political figure the platform has flagged. In April, Kalshi suspended three congressional candidates for betting on their own races. In late August, it issued a lifetime ban against former New York Republican Representative George Santos over trades tied to whether he would attend the State of the Union.

Cryptopolitan reported that the CFTC ordered Santos to give up $17,569.98, pay a civil penalty of $17,500, and stay out of the markets for three years.

Regulators and industry have been attempting to solve the problem for months. In late April, the Senate voted unanimously to bar lawmakers and their staff from prediction markets.

Cryptopolitan reported that the venture firm a16z urged the CFTC to build a single federal framework that would have KYC checks and “prohibited trader lists.”

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