MAGA Stars’ Vance Bets Spark Insider Trading Concerns
Republican insiders are being investigated over bets made with potentially confidential information, including more than one that predicted JD Vance would be announced as Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick in 2024.
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The bets, allegedly placed over multiple years by many different insiders, were reportedly placed through the online betting platforms Polymarket and Kalshi, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The potential instances of insider trading were first flagged in April by the White House Counsel’s office, which learned that anonymous Polymarket accounts had made five-figure bets on the Iran war ceasefire.
Concerned that the information had come from staffers working inside the building, with sensitive knowledge regularly available to them, the White House began to look into who might have placed the bets.
It also prohibited staffers from making trades or placing bets using insider information, but by then, some traders had already won as much as $600,000 betting on the Iran war ceasefire, according to the Journal.
Even earlier, beltway insiders were speculating on who would be Trump’s running mate and using the speculative market platforms to cash in.
“Two previously unreported election bets were placed around the 2024 presidential race based on tips that Trump would pick JD Vance as his running mate, according to people familiar with those incidents,” according to the Journal.
Political insiders are known to keep a close track of betting odds ahead of elections. Some see them as a better gauge of public sentiment than polling.
In the summer of 2024, over lunch at The Stovall House—a members-only social club in Tampa—House Republican Anna Paulina Luna of Florida’s 13th district, reportedly told her dining companions she knew Vance would be picked as Trump’s running mate.
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“She said she had tipped off Rogan O’Handley, a popular MAGA influencer known as ‘DC Draino,’ about Trump’s pending decision so that he could use the information to place a winning bet on Polymarket,” the Journal reported a person present had said.
“The congresswoman teased O’Handley, the person said, for not placing a bigger wager.”
Luna, O’Handley, and the White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s requests for comment.
O’Handley reportedly told others that he had attempted to get Trump to pick Luna as his running mate. When she told him that Vance would be the pick instead, he placed a bet.
Both O’Handley and Luna have denied the claims.
“l am honored the WSJ thinks I am telepathic, but unfortunately I am not,” Luna told the Journal, adding she would fight against insider trading.
O’Handley, too, denied any involvement.
“Any suggestion that I traded on confidential information or discussed doing so is inaccurate,” he said in a statement to the Journal.
The allegation is under investigation, but that does not mean there is any evidence of wrongdoing.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Journal that administration officials are prohibited from using non-public information for personal financial gain, and said any implication that administration officials engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.
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