Federal authorities are investigating whether former U.S. Representative George Santos engaged in insider trading by wagering on a prediction market about his own attendance at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in February.

According to The New York Times, Santos had publicly announced plans to attend the speech, teasing in a video on X that he would be in the gallery. Around the time of the February 24 address, prediction market platform Kalshi detected that Santos had bet against his own attendance, a person familiar with the matter told the Times. Santos ultimately did not appear at the event.

Kalshi referred the matter to both the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees prediction markets. The CFTC has since opened an investigation into Santos, according to a second person who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity. It was unclear whether the Justice Department had opened a parallel inquiry, the newspaper said. 

Kalshi’s odds of Santos attending had reached nearly 75 percent on the eve of the speech before he posted on X that he had been stranded at the airport, according to the Associated Press.

The prediction market has ties to the president’s business empire following its decision early last year to name Donald Trump Jr. as a strategic adviser, the Times noted. 

A investigation by the newspaper published last month found the CFTC has repeatedly ruled in favor of prediction market companies under the current administration, and that two senior career officials who raised concerns about the handling of prediction market cases were placed on investigative leave. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig told the Times that regulators would hold wrongdoers accountable.

Santos, a Republican who represented a New York district, was charged with fraud in 2023 after media reports that he had fabricated large portions of his biography. He was expelled from the House and ultimately pleaded guilty to fraud and identity theft, receiving a 7-year prison sentence. Trump commuted the sentence last fall after Santos had served approximately 84 days, writing on social media that while Santos “was somewhat of a ‘rogue,'” he had “always vote[d] Republican.”

Although Santos’ Kalshi account has been frozen since the company identified the trades, he remains a subject of speculation, according to NPR. In May, traders bet nearly $90,000 on whether he would say certain words during an interview on Newsmax. Winners correctly predicted that he said the word “rumor” but not the word “corruption,” NPR said.