Zachary Leiter

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where DOGE is located.

At least five current and former University of Chicago students now work at the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

Christopher Sweet, a third-year in the College; University of Chicago Law School alums Antonio Gracias (J.D. ’98), James Burnham (J.D. ’09), and Joshua Fox (J.D. ’22); and Booth School of Business alum Donald Park (M.B.A. ’08) have all joined DOGE since January. 

Gracias is also currently serving his first five-year term on the University of Chicago Board of Trustees, which he joined in 2021. He is also on the board of UChicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. 

DOGE largely functions by sending staffers into federal agencies to conduct oversight. Sweet is working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Gracias at the Social Security Administration (SSA), and Park at the Small Business Administration (SBA). Burnham has stayed within DOGE as the Department’s senior counsel. Fox’s role within DOGE is unclear. 

Sweet’s employment at DOGE and the HUD was first reported on April 30 by WIRED. In an email to HUD staff, DOGE Senior Advisor Scott Langmack wrote that Sweet had “joined the HUD DOGE team with the title of special assistant, although a better title might be ‘Al computer programming quant analyst.’” Sweet has been tasked with using artificial intelligence to find places where policy from HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing “overreached.” 

Multiple sources told WIRED that Sweet is the lead on an administration-wide project using AI to reduce regulation by federal agencies. 

Since the WIRED article was published, the website of East Edge Securities, an investment firm where Sweet worked as one of three managing partners, was taken down. All of East Edge Securities’ pages now read “Offline for maintenance.” Before the website was taken down, it described the organization as “a Chicago-based investment manager that employs an opportunistic, value-oriented, and risk-controlled approach.” 

“Christopher Sweet is currently on leave from the College,” a UChicago spokesperson told the Maroon. 

The Maroon previously reported that Gracias, a longtime friend of Elon Musk, is working at DOGE and has been tasked with uncovering Social Security fraud.  

Gracias now also leads a DOGE immigration task force that has embedded officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and that works with officials at SSA and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), per Politico. All three agencies store sensitive data on undocumented immigrants. 

For Gracias, Social Security fraud and illegal immigration are inextricably related. At a Wisconsin rally with Elon Musk in March, Gracias claimed that 2 million non-citizens were issued new Social Security numbers in 2024.  

Gracias’s use of SSA data to make his claims of “tremendous fraud” could have violated a court order prohibiting DOGE employees from accessing sensitive SSA records, as NPR first reported.  

On an April 4 episode of the All-In podcast, co-hosted by Trump’s AI and crypto czar David Sacks (J.D. ’98), Gracias explained the process by which he believed “illegals” were exploiting the system. “While you’re waiting for your [immigration] court date, you could fill out an asylum application… [and] get a work authorization. Once you get that, you get a 766 and we automatically send you a Social Security card in the mail.” 

The appeal of receiving Social Security and Medicaid benefits, Gracias claimed, is driving illegal immigration, human trafficking, and cartel activity.  

UChicago Law School alum James Burnham’s involvement as a DOGE legal advisor was first reported in January by the New York Times. He has long championed conservative causes and contributed more than $7,500 to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaigns, per Federal Election Commission records reviewed by the Maroon. 

After graduating from UChicago Law, where he worked as an editor of the UChicago Law Review, Burnham worked as a lecturer at UChicago Law and an associate at the conservative law firm Jones Day. While at Jones Day, Burnham represented the Noel Canning Corporation in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, which successfully challenged President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.  

Burnham served on Trump’s first presidential term transition team in 2016, and, in 2017, Trump named Burnham a special assistant to the president and a senior associate counsel to the president. In that role, Burnham “assisted in vetting, recommending, and confirming judicial nominees” including Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. 

After leaving that role, Burnham briefly served as the Justice Department’s (DOJ) deputy assistant attorney in charge of federal programs. At the DOJ, Burnham represented the White House in pushing for the removal of press credentials from CNN reporter Jim Acosta in 2018 and the diversion of millions of dollars in congressionally-appropriated funds to Trump’s border wall. 

Subsequently, Burnham clerked for Justice Gorsuch and worked as a personal advisor to Bill Barr, who had previously served as attorney general during the first Trump administration. 

Burnham is now serving as DOGE’s general counsel, per ProPublica. According to Politico, he is “at the center of [DOGE’s] effort” to reshape the federal government. 

Joshua Fox worked as an associate for technology and privacy law at Alston & Bird after graduating in 2022 from UChicago Law, where he was executive editor of the Chicago Journal of International Law. 

Fox then worked as a litigation fellow at the nonprofit libertarian public interest law firm Institute for Justice (IJ), per a now-archived IJ bio. Per their website, IJ’s “mission is to end widespread abuses of government power and secure the constitutional rights that allow all Americans to pursue their dreams.” 

Fox has also clerked for United States Court of Federal Claims Judge Ryan Holte.  

His role at DOGE is unclear. 

Donald Park has worked at financial organizations Vista Equity Partners, Austin Ventures, The Blackstone Group, Primus Capital Partners, and Credit Suisse First Boston since graduating from Booth in 2008. In 2021, he co-founded Ionic Partners, a firm which invests in “mission critical software [companies].” 

He is also on the Booth Polsky Private Equity Council, which provides “ongoing guidance and support to the Polsky Center’s Svider Private Equity Program.” 

Through DOGE, Park is working at the SBA, as was first reported in February by PBS NewsHour. 

Neither Sweet nor Burnham responded to requests for comment. Gracias, Fox, and Park could not be reached for comment. 

HUD, DOJ, DHS, HHS, SBA, and SSA all did not respond to requests for comment. DOGE does not have a press contact.