Antonio Gracias: DOGE updates, Voter fraud arrests, Finding 'Big Balls' | All-In Live from Miami

0:01Where's Antonio Grasias? Bring him up. How bad is it? How messed up is our government? So if Twitter was like the JV Lee, this is like the NBA. It's the most complex thing I've ever seen. How is he able to find big balls? What do they show off? Do they just apply out of the blue? I mean, what do these guys come from? You found some people who were illegal immigrants who registered to vote? Yes, this is actually true. Every vote that is cast to the UN America and nullifies the vote of an American citizen. So Antonio, we know you're very busy because you decided like a couple of our other friends to take a second job working in our government for a hundred or so days.

0:39You can give him a round of applause for that. And...

0:47You know, Trump is a unique individual in all the world. There's maybe polarizing in some ways, but one thing that's not polarizing is Doge. I think everybody wants to see waste, fraud, and abuse, and control spending and government. Maybe there's some questions about how fast it's going, but we all know you and Elon like to go. You know, at a brisk pace, you laid back and you joined a little later in the process. Like a stat you joined maybe what, 15, 20 days ago? I've been there for eight weeks. Eight weeks, okay, so it's like, yeah, 60 days. And you went public with it maybe a couple of weeks ago.

1:23Yeah. I was with Lon Merrill at the first four weeks, so he didn't know it was there. Yes, so how bad is it? How messed up is our government? How insane are the processes? You're a process guy. We both worked on the Twitter acquisition and the transfer there and did all the zero -based budgeting. I mean, maybe comparing contrast to that, which was maybe one of the most horrific corporate entities I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, so now that was being run. It was tough. Yeah. Well, let me just want to thank you guys. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's great to be down here to see everybody.

1:59And let me also say that it's an honor to serve America. Like, whatever I am doing, I am grateful to be able to do it. I'm grateful my partners for allowing me to do it. And my clients are supporting it. And it truly is an honor to be there. It's made great people in the government trying to help. So let me start with that. OK, so you have to. Yeah. This is sacrifice, right? You're taking time out of your day job. It's definitely sacrifice. but it really I feel very grateful that the capacity in 30 years of training in the operations that I can be useful. You know, that feels very, I feel a gratitude.

2:28Yeah, how bad is it? So if Twitter was like the JV League, this is like the MBA. It's the most complex thing I've ever seen. I have in our office in DC. I have a map now as an example, the entire system of the basically from the border to the benefits program. It's about a 40 -foot board and it looks like a basket. It's incredible, like spaghetti -gramm stuff. And yeah, I've never seen these complex in my life. So the answer to the question is, it's worse than I thought. Much, much worse than what we saw at Twitter now X. And America, Americans, and all of you, we deserve better. Okay. If we were to, and I'm sure Shabbat has some questions in freeberry, But if we were to look at one dollar spent by our government, waste -fraud abuse, how many pennies of the dollar is it?

3:26If you had to just based on what you've seen so far, arrange. Here's what's said. So if you go into any company, you can be guys who are seen that is not super well -run, it probably is like easy cut, 15%. Easy, easy, easy. This is where the trillion dollar number came from. 15 % of simply dollars. I think if we had the political will, you'd easily get that 15 % no problem, not without any problem at all, and without cutting the core internal programs. So it's definitely there. Questions as do people want to do it or not? And remember every dollar we take, we are taking from an NGO or a beltway consultant.

4:06It's actually the people are screaming about this because we're taking money from them. And it is, whatever you read in the news media, I gotta tell ya, it isn't true. I mean the COTS, I think it's 80 % of the people that have left the government have taken packages. The packages are very lucrative. They're sort of, you know, nine months or so of severance and they're voluntary. So yeah, I tell you that I don't also say that people that work in government who are good, there's lots of good people in the government that I have met and a point of this at all this stuff. They deserve better. Okay.

4:34Imagine trying to be a civil servant. You want to do the right thing. You're working there because you care about America and you're in this like a massive bureaucratic morass with all this stuff on top of you. And I've seen like, I've seen OIG reports where the people have reported the OIG like sex trafficking and they turn it in and nothing happens. Well, I've heard that nothing happens. Okay, so that's very frustrating and they stick it out, they keep going and they keep working hard for America. So I think it's not just about the cost cuts, about the culture. Like the culture change of allowing the allowing good people who are in the government to understand the summons listening.

5:08that when they want to make improvement change or when they find fraud waste abuse they can do it and there's an avenue not to do it. I think that's actually going to be one of the most important last thing we leave is this idea that your voice matters in the government that there are good people in the government and then they want to the right thing there's a way to do it. And you got people coming back to work in the office? Oh I've told you so we've been pilloried often in the press for So it's a curing administration where I started. And here are the facts. When I got there, just like at Twitter, the parking lot was empty.

5:40I'm talking about stadium -sized parking, okay? Empty. The office was empty. There was no one in the corporate office. The headquarters office in Woodland, Maryland. And then, because we follow our process of mapping from like end -end to system, we went to visit a couple offices. I went to one myself. The one that I went to, there were about 20 people in the waiting room. There were seven people in the windows. with seven people, three Heather Shades have down. Those people were taking phone calls because during COVID they turned everyone into phone operators. What we learned is they were still running on COVID operations.

6:11So we have now, through our efforts and efforts of the interim administrator, brought everyone back to the office. And back to the offices in the field. We haven't closed one field office. Not one that you've been there. Everything you're reading about service levels is not true. What I saw, imagine what first thing that is, if you're waiting in the waiting room, you see seven windows that are 25 open. and three of the people are taking phone calls, and you're waiting. I mean, talk about the questions. So look, like in all the companies that we all run, we always talk about using incentives to shape the outcome you want.

6:43And I think you keep insisting, which I think is right, that civil servants by and large want the right things to happen, that's why they chose to go and work for the government. So what is the incentive we need to change? Is it a compensation incentive? Is it like what is it? Look, I think that people that work in the government, it's a normal distribution of everything, where it's two and a half million people, the government and plus contractors. And if people are great, if people aren't great, it's in every local middle. And the people in the middle react to the incentives as you point out.

7:12I think the most important thing here is transparency of the metrics, because these folks aren't there for the money. Mainly, they're very good to make more to somewhere else. The incentives we should create are transparency in some basic metrics. They know how they're doing. And, you know, we were, for example, it's a security, we were criticized for the website uptime. Well, turns out, the website uptime has been better since we got there than after Magic of Engineers. And we've now published the metrics on the website, eight publicly. So if you would see it. So the engineering team, now manage the website, you can see, you know, that they're doing a good job or not doing a good job.

7:43And the public can see they're doing a job or not doing a good job. I don't think it's, financial incentives are always useful. But this is not just about money. Like, for example, if you look at Singapore. Yeah. The Singaporean approach from Likuan Yu was, let's create a government that is extremely empowered, but let's also make it quite small, let's make them more compensated, and let's try to find sort of an elite cadre of folks. Is that approach possible in the United States, or should we even think that we should try something like that? I mean, look, Singapore is a unique, a unique experiment in the world.

8:22It's also a place where you, you know, might not get in Cain if you drop Chuyenge on the foreground. Okay, so in America, we have a different, a different level of, I would say, of freedom and rights. You know, we should strive for civil service that is professional, well compensated, and mission -oriented. And that mission -oriented is serving the United States. And I think that gets back to, look, there are very good people. the one great thing, serve their country, that's why they're there. And I wouldn't make it about the money. I wouldn't make it about the mission. And we get there are very good people there, I'm mission.

8:56I met them. They are the ones pointing all this about to us. Right. Can you talk about, you guys went on Fox the other day with the Doge team. Big balls. And Big balls was there. We were talking about this backstage. age, all of those guys were like 12 years old. What is it about the role, the opportunity, the way it was presented that attracted this group of what were incredibly well -spoken, highly intelligent, clearly extraordinarily motivated individuals? It's the sort of caliber of talent that all of us aspire to hire and first of all, find, hire, and then they're on the mission, is it Elon's inspiration and the reach he has that made this happen, is this a particular moment in American history, because I was looking at that table and I was thinking about like the founding fathers and the age of the founding fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence.

9:57They were all super young and I was like, man, this is an opportunity to kind of rewrite how government operates in America today, but I was just struck by the age and the talent and how that came together and kind of, Where do they show up? Did they just apply out of the blue and you guys have recruiters out there? I mean, where do these guys come from? So you have a recruiting team actually. They're great. Barish and Emily, do the recruiting. And I'll tell you, I just want to stop for a second and say this. This is extraordinary. These people are extraordinary. All of them. The young people who saw the table are extraordinary.

10:28They're amazing engineers. They're like any one of us would be, they're 10x engineers who would all be thrilled down our companies. You know, obviously, these extraordinary leaders, So they come for for him, but I think they're really motivated by the mission. They're motivated by the idea that this is a moment where they can actually, they can ignore the story of it to the country. And that is a flywheel that brings more people, right? So they bring their friends and it's, you know, you recruit other people in. And there are extraordinary, extraordinary people there, man. So you saw the people at the table in that particular interview.

10:57I didn't say a word. I literally, it wasn't they company. I actually, it was you and the other guy. Yeah, I didn't say anything. The reason I didn't say anything was because I didn't need to. Yeah, these guys are extraordinary. And one of them, and they're spoke about this, Ethan. He's in my self -classed Harvard. He dropped out of Harvard with two classes left to come do this. Big Ball is an example. He's great, Ronald. I work with an engineer named Ronald's great. And then I got to tell you, there's a whole list of people you didn't see there who are kind of in their 30s. I think my buddy Josh is working on the college stuff and a few other things.

11:33These guys are, I mean, this guy was a senior executive right in store KGR, left his job to come do this, okay? And there's, in neural number of people like this, it's an extraordinary group. I feel honored to be part of it. I feel honored to look at them. But it really is amazing. Can't you tell you an answer to this? Yeah, but I just want to, like, do you think that this, because these guys aren't going to work in the government forever. They're coming in, they're building something, they're activating, and they're moving on. Back to their private life. Like the founding fathers did, at the start of the American government.

12:04Is that a better model for how government should operate rather than have career employees, career politicians, but treat it more like civil service where everyone has some role that they should play at some point, like they do in Israel where you have to go to the army for a few years and everyone is required, same in Singapore actually, where everyone kind of have to go spend their time in the government, contribute, participate, but it become a mechanism where there's an incentive to grow it and get more money flowing through it because that's how I individually as a politician or employee long -term would benefit from the government.

12:35I think it's a great point. It's a great point on Singapore actually. I actually brought that up which is a winch -mob has question. I think that we're proving there's two types of people in government today. There's careers. They call them in politicals, right? I think there should be a third type, which is what you're talking about. People that are doing public service for a short Rotoration short iteration, whether it's me 130 as a SG or you know, it's a couple of years then here something I think a culture of this in America would be great for America and great and not just for what it does the government But how it binds us as a people right serving your country going there seeing how hard it is right seeing the the way it works Understanding that really from the inside was going on.

13:12It's an I had no idea It's like what part of the government did you work in for your two -year service? or you've been working for a few months, right? This would be a great thing for America and a great thing for our society because that cultural public service, I think would bring us closer together. Shimonth, you were gonna say something about the... I had, I mean, without saying too much, but you can guess. So all of us have known Elon for a really long time. I also worked for another person that's of that same stature for a long time. And... He's much shorter. Much shorter. And one of... I say that, a very good friend of his came to see me recently for lunch.

13:54And he asked me this exact same question about Elon. He said, like it was kind of like a... Just like that's the question that they were grappling with. How is he able to find big balls? And so many big balls. I actually can tell you. I've seen him find big balls. Yeah. It's a serious strategy. But what I told is he responds to emails or tweets, Twitter people will say like, I have a solution to this. We should do that. And then I've been CCDOT messages where he sends them to the right person. He has people to vet them and see if this idea actually works. And I think he's very opportunistic and doesn't prejudge where you went to school and what your credentials is.

14:35It's almost the opposite. The less credentials you are, he has a predisposition to think you're more right. Have you solved the problem? By the way, this is a Peter Teele. But my answer to this was there's a lot of people that can be responsive in email I think there's a handful of people that are real northern stars for technical talent But he's the only one that when you walk in the room he says here's this mission and it is so generally otherworldly Nobody else can really say that it is a flywheel as you said that is extremely unique the fact that you can direct that entropy to the United States government.

15:10I think is a blessing. Now the question is how do we follow up and make it attractive? Because to your point, I saw those kids on that interview and any of my five kids, if they had done what they did, I would have been so proud. I was so impressed with these kids. I'm really impressed. And you're like, you're proud to be an American watching these kids. You saw Elon's face nodding while they were speaking with a grin ear to ear. He was proud. He was proud. He was his kids. Well, I think it's important for maybe people to sit back and say this has all been done in a hundred days from a cold start It's not like right they brought in people you brought in people who are like I know the lay of the land here It was like we're going to figure this out from first principles do zero based budgeting whatever it is Look at the data and see where it leads us and I think one of the disturbing things about the data and most controversial Issues in America today is the border.

16:01Yeah, and why did Biden let so many people through the border? It was kind of a question if it was even happening. Should we trust these bordering counter numbers? It doesn't seem real. And there's a lack of trust in the government. One side is saying, hey, we let all these people in. There's 15, 20 million extra people here in order to vote democratic. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since the Republicans have become the working party. But putting all that aside, you started looking at this. And we had a discussion privately about, hey, are these people signing up to vote? Because that would be an indicator that this theory that people were streaming across the border in order to vote, you found some people who were illegal immigrants who registered to vote.

16:48This is confounding. Yes, this is actually true. So we have sampled a handful of states. In those handful of states, we found people registered to vote and we have found people who actually voted. And this is all being done by sampling. Okay, so we are sampling a DHS data and then have to go to the voter rolls, check the voter rolls and then check the give that to HSI, Home and Sphere Vestigation to go and check the voter record by Sapina and the voter and the car you sign when you vote. We had already three arrests here in Florida actually and one indictment. And is that publicly known? Yes, we posted it.

17:29But the media have not covered it. Like I haven't seen much about it. So you were saying these are three individuals who illegally secured or no, legally secured social security, they legally secured social security numbers through the process. But last time, the asylum or some special program or whatever, and they were given, they given an associate member by filing a 765 and getting with our organization and they registered to vote and they actually voted in 2020 and or 2024. Three have been arrested, as once it is carefully, three have been arrested and one has been indicted. The one we indicted, I want to just stop on this guy for a minute, he's an Iraqi national.

18:07He voted in 2020 in New York. He went to prison for shooting somebody, shot some guys hand off, as charged, if I remember correctly, $6 ,000 to $60 ,000 or $70 ,000 of benefits through Medicaid. And his, we think, is now in Iraq because he's active on his Facebook page and the IP address is from Iraq. And credit to our friends at HSI, our partners at HSI, and to DOJ for tracking this down. I gotta tell you guys, it's difficult laborious work. It really is. But think about that a minute. Is that the tip of the iceberg, Antonio, do you think? Or did you guys do a lot of mining and a lot of digging to come up with those for how big of a magnitude of a problem do you think this is?

18:45What's your intuition tell you honestly right now about whether there's massive voter fraud or not? Great question, and I wanna be careful, I answer it. I'm gonna leave the data. So I'm not leaving the data and I'm entering the area of my opinion, which what you're asking me. My opinion is, actually let me step back and see what we did a second and then take my opinion. We are sampling by hand. So when you say data mining, we're not mining. We're actually like picking shovel going into by hand. This is not mechanized. There's no AI being applied. We're using SQL queries. You're literally pulling one of the ones.

19:20We're literally setting a name out of the work authorization database, DHS, checking that against the voter roll and ethical run it down to the state. Super laborious, okay? So with that in mind, my opinion is that this is the tip of the iceberg. How big the iceberg is, I don't know, and I don't want to speculate because I think it would be, not the right thing to do at this moment, I think we'll have more data over time. But for sure, if we can sample out of a database, and it takes an engineer about a data find 20 -ish cases. So a DOJS for was 10 to 20 -ish cases per state, it just gives you a sense of what's happening.

19:53It takes an engineer about a day to find 10 to 20 cases per state in sampling. That gives you an idea of how many there are. That's going on. Are you shocked that people don't care about this more? I'm shocked. I think people really do care. Should we care more? Yes. I want to separate the questions. I think people care more. Everyone here cares a lot. A lot about this. I think for some reason the news media isn't care more. Now, should you care? Yes. You know, there's this idea like it's always a little bit of frauds pervasive, which is not a big deal, wrong. Here's the reality. Every vote that is cast to England America nullifies the vote of an American citizen.

20:35It is your constitutional right to vote in America. And if we don't have a zero -defect system, we are violating your constitutional rights. And I will tell you, you deserve the America Public Deserves that we strive for a zero -defect system. Wait, we make met up the vices in America with a ZODFec system. We shouldn't make votes in a ZODFec system. If we don't strive for a ZODFec system, we will get a lot more fraud. This is what the real idea is so important. We should strive for this. It doesn't matter if it's one vote. It's easily solved with the last 15 states that don't require voter ID to simply do that.

21:06And that would pretty much end this debate, I think. I mean, well, I want to tell you, there are states that do require ID. I think real ID will solve it. because one of the things our engineers are building, and it was already there by they're making it, they're cleaning up any ore properties, a thing called save. The database called save is available to the states. In the Biden administration, they raised the price, but I think about an API call to $3 and change the API call, and all the state stops you stop using it. Save is a database that has the actual citizenship data for the entire country, okay?

21:38We're cleaning up now and making the actual UI much better. If the states have real ID, and then you save, you solve this problem. And I cannot understand why a state would not do this. So whose decision would it be to just change the cost of an API? So great question, Jamoth. The Secretary of Homeland Security, I want to thank her. Secretary Nome has just signed a policy memo to make it free. Yeah, I just thought I'd charge anyway. Doesn't it make any sense to me? Yes, that's the right way. That's the very simple thing. Secretary Nome, you made this free. Your parents? I know your dad is an immigrant.

22:14My parents are both immigrants. Both immigrants. Two immigrants sitting here. My mother came here last to English. Yeah. So, to be clear. Pick me, pick me, me too. You're an immigrant. Also an immigrant. Seventh generation. No way. Which way is this fit? I don't know. Who's not? Is it, oh Jason? Who do you think? Seventh generation. I'm the all -impressive residential candidate by default. Not so much. I don't know. You're from MonoLypiz, though. Yes, yeah. And the five points. But how should immigration work in this country? We've talked about it on our pod, the point -based system, et cetera.

22:48We still want immigration. We need high -skilled immigration. We talked to President Trump about that. He said he was committed to giving people green cards who have diplomas. And this is a little out of your purview, but just how does Antonio Grasios feel about immigration? You know deporting people, you know deporting people with maybe less due process than maybe some of us are comfortable with? What do you think we should be doing here as a country? There's a lot in that question. Yes, so look I'm an enormous fan of immigration I mean, I you will not find a guy who's more pro immigration. I am Because my parents are immigrants They came here with nothing and built the life and I am the American dream.

23:28I'm so grateful it's country for my, put something for my family. You go, you won't find it. I am so grateful it's country, it's been great for us, okay? And for all of you. The reality is that we need to, thank you.