Former Republican and perpetual Trump antagonist Adam Kinzinger pocketed $823 betting on former President Joe Biden’s pardons, including his own. Federal regulators are reportedly investigating how the former Illinois congressman placed those bets.
The account under scrutiny traded on Kalshi in December 2024 and January 2025, before Biden left office. Three people familiar with the investigation told POLITICO that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is examining the transactions. Kalshi is also conducting a review. Kinzinger has already admitted that he placed the bets, but he denies knowing anything the public didn’t.
Kinzinger was on CNN that January railing against Trump and insisting he wanted no part of a Biden pardon. He was willing to put money on the question, though.
Asked about the trades, the former congressman told POLITICO he had read and understood the rules. He took them to mean he couldn’t work for the involved agency, have inside information, or influence what happened. In his telling, he was clear on all three:
“I was not a congressman or candidate, and had been out of office for two years, and had no inside information.”
“I felt confident in this because I had never had a conversation with anyone about [the pardons], much less anyone anywhere near the White House.”
Kalshi bars participants from betting on events in which they're directly named, and also does not allow trading with inside information or any influence over the result. One of Kinzinger's bets had his own name on it. Whether that's enough to constitute a violation is what investigators are determining.
Kinzinger says neither Kalshi nor the CFTC has contacted him about an investigation. Both declined to comment to POLITICO. As for his other bets, he put the total at roughly 25 and said he mostly lost money.
The $823 came from the pardons. And he'd already given CNN viewers quite a lecture about why he didn't want one.
On January 6, 2025, Anderson Cooper asked Kinzinger about a possible pardon. Kinzinger warned that Trump’s allies would use investigations to force his opponents to spend money defending themselves. Then came the speech about his own innocence, with another swipe at Trump:
“But the second you take a pardon and it looks like you’re guilty of something — I’m guilty of nothing besides bringing the truth to the American people, and in the process, embarrassing Donald Trump, because for 187 minutes, he sat there and did absolutely nothing and showed how weak and scared he truly was.”
“So no, I don’t want it.”
Biden issued the preemptive pardons for January 6 committee members in his final hours as president. RedState covered the outgoing administration’s extraordinary protection for the left-wing panel at the time.
Kinzinger spent November 2024 calling Kalshi a "corruption time bomb" on Substack. On Tuesday, while being questioned about his own trades on the platform, he said he was generally pleased with its screening efforts.
The bet on his own pardon, though? He volunteered that himself. Biden's pardon was beneath him when Cooper asked. On Kalshi, it was worth a wager.