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By Peter Aitken
Politics Weekend Editor
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Prediction market site Polymarket on Friday saw a surge in activity backing an early summer exit for FBI Director Kash Patel after an Iran-backed hacker group leaked a seeming decade of his personal and business emails.
Why It Matters
Prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket have surged in prominence over the past two years, drawing growing attention from investors, policymakers and the media as alternatives to traditional polling.
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These platforms allow users to buy and sell contracts tied to real‑world outcomes, including elections, wars and policy decisions, and gained widespread visibility after delivering poll‑beating forecasts during the 2024 presidential election.
Their apparent ability to aggregate dispersed information and rapidly reflect shifts in political sentiment has helped fuel rapid user growth, even as the industry operates in a regulatory gray area overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The perceived accuracy of prediction markets has been reinforced by a series of eerily well‑timed bets on geopolitical events, particularly during the Iran conflict.
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What To Know
Polymarket started the day with Patel at a 1 percent chance of leaving office by the end of March and an 11 percent chance of leaving by June 30.
For most of the day, those numbers remained stable, with the end of March fluctuating between 1and 2 percent, but then at around 2:45 p.m. ET the odds on June 30 leapt to 36 percent, continuing to fluctuate between 36 and 38 percent before sliding to 33 percent after about an hour.
On Kalshi, the odds of Patel leaving this year, which started at around 37 percent today, has gone up 5 percent, although it has periodically hit 47 percent before surging again to 58 percent at around 3:30 p.m. ET, making him the third-most likely member of the Cabinet to depart, following Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Acting DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason, and putting him just ahead of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The surge in betting activity occurred hours after the Handala Hack Team on its Telegram channel published several photos of Patel, some of which were selfies, and documents amounting to some 300 emails allegedly taken from his account.
The group claimed Patel was part of a list of "successfully hacked" targets, claiming responsibility for the breach. U.S. officials confirmed the email account had been compromised and said some of the leaked material appeared authentic, though the full scope of the breach remained unclear.
The emails appear to be a mix of personal and business messages from between 2010 and 2019, although the dates have yet to be confirmed.
The webpage says the hack was "dedicated to the martyrs of the Dena destroyer" and warned that "this is just our beginning..."
What People Are Saying
Senator Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, on X: "Just days before we went to war with Iran, Kash Patel fired the very agents tracking Iranian threats because they worked on the Trump classified documents case. That was after he laid off half of the FBI's Cyber Division last year. Now Iran-linked hackers say they breached his personal inbox. This was entirely preventable. Unreal."
**The FBI in a statement, in part: "**The information in question is historical in nature and involves no government information. The FBI will continue to pursue the actors responsible, support victims, and share actionable intelligence in defense of networks."
Update 3/27/26, 3:55 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.
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