Mother Jones69%
George Santos Got Busted For Manipulating Political Betting Markets—and Seems to Have Little Remorse 45%
By Sophie Hurwitz75%
8/1/2026, 10:42:30 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 19 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Recency Bias, and Appeal to Emotion, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 37.2% saturation with 147 hits. Analysis detected 806 faulty-reasoning hits from 395 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 42.2% and a BS Rank of 45% (14,094 of 25,289 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 55.70% of the article peer group.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced Friday that former congressman and current legend George Santos has been fined $35,000 for attempting to place bets on his own attendance of the State of the Union in February.
He’s also been banned from the prediction-market platform Kalshi for 3 years.
According to the CFTC:
While buying and selling positions in this market, Santos posted on social media about his plans to attend or not attend the SOTU.
In his social media posts, Santos made a series of material misrepresentations and omissions about whether he would attend the SOTU.
After these posts, the SOTU contract prices moved in a direction that was favorable to Santos’ positions which allowed him to make over $17,500.
A day before the State of the Union, Santos said in a video he posted to X: “I’m going to be there for the State of Union in the gallery, guys.”
He posted on Instagram asking his followers if he should wear a “bedazzled suit” or a more toned-down option.
Then, he didn’t show up.
Santos was expelled from Congress in 2023 after he was charged with a litany of offenses that included identity theft and pilfering campaign funds.
He was sentenced to prison for 87 months, though Donald Trump commuted his sentence and he was released after 84 days.
Santos’ lawyer, Joseph Murray, wrote in a statement that the former congressman held “no intent to deceive any person, nor intent to manipulate any market,” when he placed Kalshi bets on his own potential travel to the State of the Union.
Murray added that Santos has settled with the CFTC and intends to “put this matter behind him.”
Santos, however, does not seem to have moved past this just yet: he has posted on X about Kalshi five times in the past 24 hours, calling it a predatory platform, demanding that its founder be deported, and threatening to have it “legislated out of existence.”
We need @Kalshi to be regulated as a gambling platform and remove them from the protection veil of “contract swaps” I’m going to embark on a full blown advocacy effort and I have them legislated out of existence!
Touché bitches let’s see who wins!
Place your bets while y’all…
- George Santos (@Georgesantos) August 1, 2026
Analysis
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