Antonio Gracias

Executive, age 54
Tech Industry Links: Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter
Exited govt: 7/01/25 (verified)

Antonio Gracias has had a longtime connection with Elon Musk as an early investor in both Tesla and SpaceX, and he has also sat on the boards of both companies. He also was involved with Musk’s purchase of Twitter. He has been stationed as part of the DOGE team within Social Security Administration, since late February. Over the last few months, he has regularly appeared on friendly media outlets to describe alleged instances of fraud within SSA.

Likely aliases: SSA-04

Positions

Position Notes
SSA
SSA 2/23/25-7/01/25 [as SSA-04] Expert (NTE 2/22/26, ED-00, volunteer)
resigned from agency 7/01/25

Events

Date Event
2/23/25
Social Security Administration onboards 3 more unidentified DOGE staffers – SSA-06 (Jon Koval), SSA-04 (Antonio Gracias), and SSA-09 (Payton Rehling) – as volunteers with the title of Expert.
3/12/25
In a sworn declaration, Florence Felix-Lawson notes “the SSA DOGE Team currently consists of ten SSA employees: four SSA special government employees (Employees 1, 4, 6, and 9) and six detailees to SSA from other government agencies and offices (Employees 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 10)”
3/13/25
Wired reports that 10 DOGE staffers are currently visible in the Microsoft Teams directory of all employees at SSA
3/30/25
During campaign rallies in Wisconsin, Elon Musk and Antonio Gracias publish a chart claiming to show an increase in social security numbers being granted to noncitizens as evidence of voting fraud or benefits fraud by immigrants. The problem is that these numbers are necessary for immigrants to work in roles, and are used for paying taxes rather than receiving benefits, and the statistics were from a program to replace a more cumbersome process for assigning SSN IDs. Based on this interpretation, the Trump Administration argued for a change where applicants would have to instead visit an already overstretched field office, a change that is likely to both reduce tax income from immigrant workers and increase the per-person cost from $8 to $51,000
4/02/25
In an interview on Fox, Antonio Gracias makes misleading claims that DOGE had discovered widespread voting fraud through joining social security data and state voter rolls.
4/11/25
Politico profiles a DOGE immigration task force that is located within DHS but has contacts with DOGE staff at other agencies. It includes multiple DOGE staffers detailed from various agencies.
5/22/25
Elon Musk joins a late-night meeting with senior members of the DOGE leadership team. Katie Miller delivered a blunt message that DOGE was on thin ice with the White House. She also reportedly advised that DOGE should strive to collaborate with Cabinet secretaries more instead of pushiing cuts or projects on them that they didn’t want to do.
5/23/25
In a podcast appearance, Antonio Gracias reported that the Department of Justice had requested for DOGE to find “10-20 cases” of alleged noncitizen voting in every state.
7/01/25
In response to a letter from the American Federation of Teachers union to nine public pension funds who are investors, Valor Equity Partners confirms that Antonio Gracias was working for Valor the entire time he was in DOGE and also reports that he left DOGE on July 1st. It’s unclear what the status of other Valor employees embedded in DOGE, Jon Koval and Payton Rehling, are.