Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who was a member of the House select committee that investigated the January 2021 attack on the Capitol, speaks during a rally on the National Mall in Washington, June 6, 2025. A federal financial watchdog is investigating Kinzinger for bets in a prediction market on whether President Joe Biden would pardon him before leaving office. (Eric Lee/The New York Times)
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WASHINGTON — A federal financial watchdog is investigating former Rep. Adam Kinzinger for bets in a prediction market on whether President Joe Biden would pardon him before leaving office.
Kinzinger, a Republican critic of President Donald Trump’s, was a member of the House select committee that investigated the January 2021 attack on the Capitol. He was pardoned by Biden on Jan. 20, 2025, after Trump, who had been reelected, declared that members of the select committee “should go to jail.”
The investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission centers on bets Kinzinger made on Kalshi, a leading prediction market, in the weeks before he was pardoned, according to two people familiar with the confidential inquiry who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Kinzinger netted roughly $800 on his trades, one person said. The inquiry, which began with a Kalshi referral, was reported earlier by Politico.
Kinzinger could not be reached for comment. He told Politico that he had no inside information about whether he would be pardoned and believed that he was following the rules. He retired from Congress in 2023 after serving six terms as a representative from Illinois.
The CFTC has been eager to show it is pursuing insider traders who seek to profit from prediction markets. As of August, the trading commission had as many as 20 ongoing investigations, just based on referrals from Kalshi, one of a dozen prediction markets in an exploding field. Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, has a financial stake in Kalshi and Polymarket, another leading prediction market.
The trading commission has fined two traders on prediction markets: George Santos, a former Republican member of Congress, and a former operator of the White House teleprompter. Two other individuals face civil and criminal charges.
A number of organizations have argued that the CFTC should rule out bets when only a small number of individuals are privy to knowledge about the possible outcome of an event, such as whether someone will receive a presidential pardon.
But rather than exclude categories of bets, the federal agency has left it to the prediction markets to decide when the opportunity for insider trading is too great to invite bets on what will happen.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
By Sharon LaFraniere/Eric Lee
c. 2026 The New York Times Company
