A personal fairness investor who’s certainly one of Elon Musk’s closest confidants has taken a brand new position within the Social Safety Administration, a improvement that could possibly be politically flamable given this system’s recognition with voters and Mr. Musk’s obvious intent to make main adjustments on the company.
The investor, Antonio Gracias, who has served on the boards of Mr. Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX, has began a job on the administration as a part of the Musk-led cost-cutting effort generally known as the Division of Authorities Effectivity, in line with paperwork seen by The New York Occasions and two folks knowledgeable about his appointment.
Of the greater than 50 folks who’ve joined Mr. Musk in Washington, virtually none have as intensive a historical past with him as Mr. Gracias. The lads met round 20 years in the past and in that point, Mr. Gracias has turn into certainly one of Mr. Musk’s most trusted advisers.
The involvement of such a detailed ally with the Social Safety Administration means that Mr. Musk has made overhauling the company a precedence; in latest weeks, the tech billionaire has repeatedly talked about supposed fraud contained in the system. Two weeks in the past, he referred to Social Safety as “the largest Ponzi scheme of all time,” and this week he claimed that fraud in this system and different main entitlement spending was “the large one to remove.”
Republicans have lengthy eyed privatization or cuts to Social Safety, however have averted following by way of out of concern of political blowback. At the same time as prime Republicans argue that they merely wish to strengthen this system’s funds, Democrats have spied a political alternative in Mr. Musk’s potential shake-up on the company.
9 DOGE members have arrived on the Social Safety Administration in latest days. They embrace Mr. Gracias and two different males who work at his funding agency, Valor Fairness Companions — Jon Koval, a vice chairman on the funding staff, and Payton Rehling, a knowledge engineer — in line with paperwork seen by The Occasions.
In early February, whereas talking with allies of Mr. Musk on an episode of the podcast “All-In,” Mr. Gracias minimized his position with the cost-cutting activity drive. “I’m in-and-out somewhat bit and attempting to assist the place I can, however I’m not there full time,” he stated.
However he stated that he and his staff at Valor had been scrutinizing audits of the Social Safety Administration and that he had been alarmed by the scale of its so-called belief funds, authorities accounts created to verify Individuals obtain their full advantages. Mr. Gracias stated he believed this confirmed there have been “materials weaknesses” within the system.
The exact contours of Mr. Gracias’s position, which was earlier reported by Bloomberg Information, usually are not identified. Neither Mr. Gracias nor the Social Safety Administration responded to requests for remark.
Mr. Gracias met Mr. Musk by way of David Sacks, a enterprise capitalist who’s now himself a prime Trump administration official. He was an early believer in Tesla, and personally lent Mr. Musk $1 million within the firm’s early days, in line with testimony from Mr. Gracias in a latest courtroom case. The lads and their households have vacationed collectively within the Bahamas and gone snowboarding in Jackson Gap, Wyo.
As Mr. Musk’s profession and wealth flourished, so did that of Mr. Gracias, who has tied his private model to the world-famous entrepreneur. Valor has invested in at the least 5 of Mr. Musk’s firms. In 2022 when Mr. Musk purchased the social media platform X, then generally known as Twitter, for $44 billion, he tapped Mr. Gracias to handle the funds of the transaction.
Mr. Gracias, who moved to Miami from Chicago in 2021, frolicked at Donald J. Trump’s personal Mar-a-Lago membership through the presidential transition and was certainly one of a number of of Mr. Musk’s associates who interviewed personnel in search of to affix the Trump administration. Mr. Gracias stated on “All-In” that he and Mr. Musk had marveled on the authorities’s supposed incapability to trace its spending.
“I used to be at Mar-a-Lago with Elon attempting to trace by way of: How does the cash really move?” he stated. “Nobody might inform us the way it really flows. The place is it going out? Folks didn’t know.”
Mr. Gracias, who graduated from Georgetown’s overseas service faculty, was within the nation’s capital in January to accompany Mr. Musk to a dinner on the elite Alfalfa Membership, the place he and Mr. Musk mingled with members of the political institution.
Mr. Gracias has undergone a political reinvention. He attended the September 2016 presidential debate as a supporter of Hillary Clinton, and gave a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s marketing campaign in 2020. Now, he largely backs Republicans: He gave hundreds of thousands to David McCormick throughout his 2022 and 2024 Senate runs in Pennsylvania and donated $1 million to Mr. Musk’s pro-Trump tremendous PAC.
At instances, Mr. Gracias’s language has been bolder than Mr. Musk’s. Within the February podcast episode, he stated Mr. Musk’s declaration that 10 p.c of the federal funds was most likely fraud “could be low.” He has additionally claimed that the nation was flirting with turning into a “kleptocracy” and a “Latin American-style autocracy.”
He has described himself as a loyal supporter of the billionaire, regardless of the pursuit. “I’m 100% with you Elon,” Mr. Gracias wrote to Mr. Musk in a March 2022 textual content message as he waged his combat to purchase Twitter, as revealed in authorized filings.
Andrew Duehren contributed reporting.
