One of Elon Musk's closest confidants, private equity investors, have played a new role in the Social Security Administration. This is a politically flammable development given the voters and Musk's aim to make a big difference in agency.
Antonio Gracias, an investor who served on Musk's company Tesla and SpaceX's board of directors, has started working in the administration as part of a mask-driven cost-cutting effort known as government efficiency, known as government efficiency.
Of the more than 50 people who joined Musk in Washington, few have a history with him as extensive as Gracias. The man met about 20 years ago, at which point Gracias became one of Musk's most trusted advisors.
Such close allies and the Social Security Agency's involvement suggests that Musk has made the institution a priority. Over the past few weeks, tech billionaires have spoken regularly about assumed scams within their systems. Two weeks ago, he called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” and this week claimed that the program and other major qualification spending fraud were “a big thing to eliminate.”
Republicans have long seen privatization or social security cuts, but have avoided following in fear of political blows. Democrats spied on political opportunities in potential reforms at Muss' institutions, despite top Republicans claiming they simply wanted to strengthen the program's finances.
Recently, nine Doge members have arrived at the Social Security Bureau. The documents seen by The Times include Gracias and two men working for investment firm Valor Equity Partners (Vice President of the Investment Team) and data engineer Payton Rehling.
In early February, while talking to Musk's allies on an episode of the podcast “All In,” Gracias minimized his role in the cost-cutting task force. “I'm trying to come in and out a bit and help where I can, but not full time,” he said.
However, he said that Valor's he and his team were scrutinizing the Social Security Bureau's audit and that he was on alert at the size of the so-called trust fund. Gracias said he believes this demonstrated the “material weakness” in the system.
Some Republicans have suggested that the government can reuse cash from the Social Security Trust Fund. This grew over the decades as Americans paid more taxes to the program than benefits. But now, Americans are now receiving more benefits than they pay in taxes, so Social Security has run out of trust funds. In short, the funds do not have such cash to be reused.
The exact outline of Gracias' role, previously reported by Bloomberg News, is unknown. Neither Gracias nor the Social Security Agency responded to requests for comment.
Gracias met Musk through David Sachs, a venture capitalist who is now the top executive of the Trump administration. He believed in Tesla early, and personally lends him $1 million to Musk, according to Gracias' testimony in a recent lawsuit. The man and his family went on vacation together in the Bahamas and skied at Jackson Hole in Wyo.
When Musk's career and wealth flourished, Gracias' career, which has linked his personal brand to world-renowned entrepreneurs, also flourished. Valor has invested in at least five of Musk's companies. In 2022, when Musk bought social media platform X, known as Twitter, for $44 billion, he tapped Gracias to manage the finances of the transaction.
Glacias, who moved from Chicago to Miami in 2021, was one of Musk's friends who spent time at Donald J. Trump's private Marlago club during the presidential transition and interviewed personnel seeking to join the Trump administration. Gracias said he was surprised he and Musk could not track government spending “all in.”
“I was in Mar Arago and Elon was trying to track it down. How does the money actually flow?” he said. “No one told me how it actually flowed. Where are you heading? People didn't know.”
Gracias, a graduate of Georgetown's Foreign Service School, accompanied Musk in January to have dinner at the elite Alfalfa club, where Musk was mingling with members of the political facility.
Mr. Gracias was subjected to political reinvention. He attended the presidential debate as a supporter of Hillary Clinton in September 2016, and in 2020 he gave the Joseph R. Biden Jr. campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Sometimes Gracias' language is bolder than Musk's language. In a February podcast episode, he said 10% of the federal budget had declared Musk's declaration that the scam could be “low.” He also claims the country will flirt with “creptocrasy” and “Latin American dictatorship.”
He described himself as a loyal supporter of the billionaire, whatever his pursuit was. “I'm 100% with you,” Gracias wrote to Musk in a March 2022 text message, when he fought to buy Twitter, as revealed in his legal declaration.
Andrew Duren contributed the report.
