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.
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.”
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.
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.
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 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.”
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.
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