Warren: What is White House doing to prevent a repeat of teleprompter's Trump bets?

The Massachusetts Democrat and fellow Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon wrote in a Tuesday letter to the White House's lawyer, Will Scharf, that the illicit transactions from the former employee represented "another in a long series of disturbing incidents during the Trump administration, raising deep concerns about what other unethical activities may be occurring under your supervision."

Warren is expected to take over the gavel of the Senate Banking Committee in January, where she'd be in a position to steer the panel's oversight mission. She's long directed a critical eye to prediction markets, crypto and Trump's involvement in both, and the latest letter argued that "since President Trump took office, the White House appears to have become consumed by a culture of corruption and greed that has placed personal financial interests ahead of the public interest."

Several months ago, the teleprompter bets came to light, in which the former staffer was targeted with enforcement actions from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the platform, Kalshi, having to pay more than $170,000 and accept a three-year trading ban. It was among the first highly publicized insider-trading cases in the fast-growing prediction market sector, and the senators contend that it "should have been a wake-up call to the entire administration to enforce stronger ethics policies." But the lawmakers said the White House took "no meaningful action."

"To date, the only publicly known action the current White House has taken regarding the ethical obligations of its employees participating in prediction markets was circulating a warning memo, which is unlikely to counteract a broader cultural attitude of lawlessness," the letter said.

Warren, who has criticized Trump's ties to the closely related crypto and the event contract sectors, noted that "the president's family has become even more entangled with the success of this industry," particularly flagging Donald Trump Jr.'s advisory work and business connections to prediction markets.

Fellow Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto raised similar concerns on Monday. And California Rep. Ro Khanna called for an outright ban on sports-related prediction markets on Tuesday.

In these waning weeks of the congressional session, Democrats are warming up for the takeovers of the majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. Letters like Warren's signal the topics they're likely to get into.