CFTC Investigating Adam Kinzinger Over Kalshi Bets on His Own Pardon: Report

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois over prediction market trades tied to the presidential pardon he received from Joe Biden, Politico reported, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.

The trades were made through a Kalshi account linked to Kinzinger in December 2024 and January 2025. He told the publication he had bet on a contract covering whether he would personally receive a pardon, and on a separate contract covering whether Biden would issue preemptive pardons before leaving office.

Biden did so in his final hours in January 2025, preemptively pardoning Kinzinger and other members of the House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the Capitol.  Donald Trump, who was inaugurated shortly after Biden signed the pardons, had called for the committee’s members to be jailed.

The sums were small, with Kinzinger providing screenshots that showed he made $823 on the trades. He said he placed around 25 trades at the time, mostly losing money.

He denies wrongdoing. He had been out of office for two years when he placed the bets, he said, was neither a congressman nor a candidate, and had “no inside information.” He added that he had read Kalshi’s rules beforehand and understood them to prohibit trading where a user works for the relevant agency, can influence the outcome, or holds non-public information about it, and that he had never discussed the pardons with anyone.

Kalshi prohibits users from betting on contracts in which they are direct participants, and the CFTC bans the use of material nonpublic information on the markets it regulates. The exchange has been reviewing the transactions as well. Both the agency and Kalshi declined to comment to Politico, and Kinzinger said neither had contacted him about the investigation.

Kalshi has acted on similar cases. It suspended three congressional candidates in April over bets on their own races. It also froze the account of former Representative George Santos and referred him to the CFTC and the Justice Department over trades made against his own attendance at the State of the Union while he publicly said he would go, then banned him for life in late August.

A “corruption time bomb”

Kinzinger has been among the platform’s critics. In a Substack post last November he objected specifically to markets on the conduct of individual members of Congress, citing contracts on which senator would first visit Syria and on how each member would vote on releasing the Epstein files. He called such markets “a corruption time bomb,” arguing that “a platform that lets insiders (and legislators) gamble on their own behavior is a threat to democracy.” He now says he is broadly pleased with how Kalshi’s screening has developed.

An outspoken Trump critic, Kinzinger clashed with the president over foreign policy and his election fraud claims in 2020. In a March 2025 Truth Social post, Trump called the pardons “void” and said the recipients were “subject to investigation at the highest level.” The White House declined to comment to Politico.

The investigation lands as the CFTC sharpens its attention on the sector. Staff warned exchanges last week that contracts settling on the words or conduct of a named individual should be presumed open to manipulation, a month after the agency fined a former White House teleprompter operator $172,000 over trades on presidential mention markets.