Soldier's arrest over Polymarket bet on Maduro raid fuels insider trading concerns

A U.S. Special Forces soldier who helped to plan the January capture of Venezuelan President

Nicolas Maduro has been indicted for allegedly using classified information about the raid

to place bets in the prediction market.

The soldier who was stationed at Fort Bragg and North Carolina won more than $400,000 on

the platform Polly Market by placing a series of bets about Maduro's removal.

The indictment is raising new concerns about insider trading and the need for regulation.

Joining us to discuss this is our White House correspondent Liz Landers and David Hill,

who's a journalist who writes about gambling for Rolling Stone and on his American gambler

sub-stack. Welcome to you both. And David, I'll start with you because you follow these markets

so closely. Just briefly set the stage for us. What kind of concerns does this indictment raise?

Well, it raises a lot of concerns. It also answers a lot of concerns. There's been quite a bit of

there's been quite a bit of concern about prediction markets and the markets that they offer on

geopolitical events, but also an insider trading that might be happening those markets for a number

of months as we've seen prediction markets grow in the United States. And so a prosecution like this

is very important, I think, for the prediction markets to try to return to some trust and

sense of integrity about the markets that they offer. And Liz, you had a chance to ask President

Trump about this indictment specifically yesterday. What did he say? This news was breaking as we

were going back into the Oval Office around 6 p.m. last night. And I asked the president about this

case kind of read some of the details to him. He actually seemingly not heard about it yet. So

he was asking me questions. And then I asked him a follow-up question about these bigger beds that

are also being placed about Iran. Here's that exchange. Can you place as well on the Iran conflict

too? And there have been some trackings where people suspect that there's insider trading happening

on these prediction markets around the world. Are you concerned about that? The whole world,

unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino. And you look at what's going on all over the world

in Europe and every place they're doing these betting things. I was never much in favor of that.

I like it conceptually. But it is what it is. No, I think that I'm not happy with any of that.

One of those beds that has drawn quite a bit of scrutiny is a large bet again on polymarket

back in March on the death of the Ayatollah. This person made about a half a million dollars

on anonymous better on polymarket. Meanwhile, David, we know there's been guidelines for sports

gambling websites in place for years. That is not true when it comes to betting on geopolitical

events. You know, Congress is just starting to introduce some related bills. But when it comes to

regulation or guidelines, what do you think is needed here? Well, what polymarket and calcium

want us to believe is that they are offering futures contracts and should be regulated by the

CFTC. And there are regulations that exist within the CFTC about insider trading in commodities

and futures. And so, ostensibly, any bet that you make on calcium polymarket should be

under those same regulations, which is part of what I think we're trying to test here with the

arrest of Mr. Van Dyke and the investigation about whether or not he committed insider trading when

he made the bet about the Maduro, the Maduro operation. As we know that the White House has

reportedly actually issued a warning to its own staff last month against using insider information

to bet on the Iran War in the prediction markets. Tell us about that. Pretty unusual. The White

House personnel office sent around an email to White House staffers last month according to

the Wall Street Journal and said that they cannot bet on the Iran War in these prediction markets.

White House said in a press statement that federal employees are subject to ethics guidelines that

prohibit the use of non-public info for financial benefit. The Trump family, though, does have

connections to these prediction markets. The president's son, Don Jr., is an advisor to both

calcium and polymarket. Some critics of the presidents have accused him of using his power as the

president to manipulate the markets when he talks to reporters on the phone or issues statements

on truth social. The Trump administration, though, is coming down hard in this indictment that

came out yesterday. The Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch said, quote, widespread access to

prediction markets is a relatively new phenomenon, but federal laws protecting national security

information fully apply. The U.S. Attorney that brought these charges against Van Dyke yesterday

said that he engaged in, quote, clear insider trading, Amna.

David, pull this back a little bit for us on terms of the lens through which we're looking at

this. Now, even if it is legal, right, is there something immoral or ethically questionable here

about betting on geopolitical events when lives are potentially at stake? Certainly, the question

of morality is sort of central to all of this, but I do think it's important to understand that

these types of bets are made in the major financial markets every single day.

I mean, just one of the big controversies that I think the Trump administration is sort of

reacting to isn't just the best that are made on polymarket or on CalShi, but that in the minutes

before he announced the Iran ceasefire, there were close to a billion dollars worth of oil futures

that were traded in the commodities markets. And so there's always the sort of looming question

about insider information that could be utilized on bets in the markets that are impacted by world

and global events. All right, that is David Hale from Rolling Stone and our own Liz Landers,

covering this issue for us. Thank you to you both.