Polymarket is facing a $170,000 lawsuit over a Trump prediction bet after a bettor said the site wrongly ruled that President Donald Trump never said the word “Khamenei” in March. The case centers on a market tied to the online prediction platform’s recurring question, “What will Trump say this week?”
Jesús Manuel Gonzalez Hernandez says he bought 170,000 “yes” shares for $300 after Polymarket asked whether Trump would say “Khamenei” or “Ayatollah” during the week of March 15. If the market had been resolved in his favor, the payout would have totaled $170,000. His lawyers say White House transcripts and video of Trump speaking on Air Force One support his claim that the president said “Khamenei” twice while talking to reporters.
The lawsuit points to video in which Trump appears to say, “They showed about 250,000 people in the square, saying how much they love Khamenei,” as part of the exchange. Polymarket, however, resolved the market as “no” and did not pay Gonzalez Hernandez. The company has not commented on the suit.
At the center of the dispute is how the prediction market handled the language of the bet. Gonzalez Hernandez’s lawyers argue the rules did not require Trump to pronounce the word exactly or to be referring specifically to Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. They also say Polymarket’s explanation does not hold up, since the company argued Trump was actually referring to Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian leader who died in 1989.
