The tech billionaire has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the Social Security system is rife with fraud, even as President Trump denies plans to cut the benefits.
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Elon Musk at the White House last week.
Elon Musk continues to talk about Social Security.
Two weeks ago, he called it a Ponzi scheme. This week, he suggested that his Department of Government Efficiency would audit the agency’s spending. And he has repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that Social Security payments are funneled to illegal immigrants and dead people.
The latest sign of his interest in the agency came today, when my colleagues Theodore Schleifer, Keith Conger and Ryan Mack reported that one of Musk's closest advisers had taken a position there.
The adviser is Antonio Gracias, a private equity investor who loaned Musk $1 million in Tesla’s early days and vacationed with his family in places like Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Gracias’s involvement may be the clearest sign yet that Musk sees the agency as a key priority. He is one of nine members of the Department of Government Efficiency who have arrived in recent days, my colleagues wrote. The other two work for Gracias’s investment firm.
We don’t know exactly what Gracias’s role was. But a court filing last week provided insight into DOGE’s early activities at the agency. In a filing that The Washington Post covered in detail, Tiffany Flick, a human resources employee who retired in mid-February, said the group’s representatives appeared to be looking for sensitive information and data that fell into three categories: allegations of benefit payments to deceased people; concerns about multiple benefits going to a single Social Security number; and payments to people without a Social Security number.
Flick said the concerns were “baseless.” But they are consistent with the false allegations of fraud that Musk and President Trump have publicly made — allegations that Democrats say Republicans intend to use as a pretext for audits and cuts.
Trump and his allies have repeatedly denied that they have plans to cut Social Security benefits, something Republicans have long avoided doing for fear of political backlash.
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