Chief Oversight Counsel, Senate Committee on Finance
Chris Armstrong is Deputy Chief Oversight Counsel to Chairman Orrin G. Hatch on the Senate Committee on Finance. He previously worked for Chairman Dave Camp on the House Committee on Ways and Means and Senator Charles E. Grassley. He serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group. The views expressed herein are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of Chairman Hatch or the Finance Committee.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University
Howard W. Cox is a former federal prosecutor, criminal investigator and Senior Intelligence Service officer. After almost 40 years of federal service, he retired as the Assistant Inspector General for Investigations of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this capacity, Mr. Cox supervised criminal, civil and administrative investigations conducted by the Office of Inspector General (OIG). Prior to his employment with the CIA, Mr. Cox was the Assistant Deputy Chief of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Department of Justice, where he was responsible for supervising criminal prosecutions of federal hacking and identity theft cases. While at the Department of Justice, Mr. Cox received the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award.
Prior to his service with the Department of Justice, Mr. Cox served as a manager, attorney and criminal investigator at OIG offices at the US Postal Service, the Department of Defense, and the General Services Administration. He also served as Staff Counsel for the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Prior to his federal civilian service, Mr. Cox was also a Captain and trial attorney in the US Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Mr. Cox also served as Law Secretary to the Hon. Sherwin D. Lester, NJ Superior Court.
Mr. Cox is an adjunct professor at George Washington University, where he teaches graduate level courses in computer forensics. He is also an instructor with the Graduate School USA, and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where he teaches courses related to procurement fraud and electronic search and seizure. Mr. Cox received his AB degree from Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ. He received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC.
Founder, President and CEO, LabMD
Mike Daugherty is the CEO of LabMD, a cancer testing laboratory. He has spent most of the last decade defending his company against charges that it had deficient cybersecurity practices. The early years of his entering and fighting Washington, DC, are recorded in his book, “The Devil Inside the Beltway”. In so doing, he has become the only litigant to challenge the basic authority that underlies more than 200 enforcement actions relating to cybersecurity and online privacy that the FTC has brought over the past 15 years. Every one of the 200+ litigants before him – including some of the largest companies in the world – have settled with the FTC, creating an unquestioned and untested belief that the FTC has broad authority to regulate in these areas. Following oral arguments in June, 2017, before a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, it seems entirely possible that he will prevail. In so doing, he may well topple key pillars of the FTC’s cybersecurity and online privacy edifice, successfully exposing and challenging The Administrative State.
Associate Professor, Northern Illinois University
Evan Bernick joined the NIU Law faculty in 2021. He teaches courses in constitutional law, criminal law, criminal procedure, administrative law and legislation.
From 2020 to 2021, Professor Bernick was a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and the executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Before that, he served as a clerk to Judge Diane S. Sykes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. From April 2017 to April 2019, he was a visiting lecturer at Georgetown and a resident fellow of the Center for the Constitution.
His scholarship covers a range of topics, from constitutional law, to philosophy of law, to social movements, to law enforcement. He has published with the Georgetown Law Journal, the Notre Dame Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review and the George Mason Law Review, among other journals. His book, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit (2021), with Randy E. Barnett, was published by Harvard University Press under its Belknap imprint "for books of long-lasting importance, superior in scholarship and physical production, chosen whether or not they might be profitable."
Professor Bernick received his bachelor's degree in 2008 from the University of Chicago, where he studied philosophy and graduated with honors. He received his juris doctorate in 2011 from the University of Chicago Law School.
President and CEO, Goldwater Institute
Darcy Olsen is President of the Goldwater Institute, a research and legal center that Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will heralded as “simply in the liberty business and there’s no institution in the country that performs that business better.”
Ms. Olsen’s leadership has been critical to the Institute’s success, including the development and enactment of hundreds of reforms and the protection of multiple constitutional rights in state and federal courts.
When Ms. Olsen took the helm of the Goldwater Institute in 2001, it was struggling to stay afloat. She revamped the Institute’s organizational structure to parallel a private-sector company focused on results. Shortly after, her colleagues presented her with a life-sized replica of Darth Vader, symbolizing her willingness to terminate non-performers and face down critics.
Ms. Olsen’s vision has made the Goldwater Institute a national leader in the movement to restore America as a compound republic, where states exercise their constitutional authority to check and limit federal power.
Under Ms. Olsen’s direction, the Goldwater Institute developed Save Our Secret Ballot initiative, a successful nationwide effort to protect businesses from labor union card-check. Despite strong-arm tactics from the federal government, the Institute beat back a legal challenge brought by the National Labor Relations Board against Save Our Secret Ballot. “These aren’t merely symbolic victories,” hailed the Wall Street Journal. “States can protect their economies from the NLRB with initiatives like [Save Our Secret Ballot].”
The Goldwater Institute also designed the nation’s first education savings accounts. Parents use the accounts to pay for a range of education expenses, including private school tuition, educational therapies, and even college. The New York Times highlighted the accounts as a national model for states as they reform public education. When the education unions sued over the program, the Goldwater Institute stepped in and won, paving the way for children nationwide to benefit.
The Goldwater Institute is currently spearheading the Right to Try initiative, a state-level measure that will give terminally ill patients access to potentially life-saving medicines. Under the current system, terminally ill patients have to wait to gain access to new treatments, which can take over a decade to make it to market. This lifesaving measure is moving through several states.
An authority on education reform, economic policy, and government reform, Ms. Olsen is a regular guest on national media programs. Her opinions have been widely published in outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review.
Ms. Olsen has received numerous awards and recognitions including a 2014 Bradley Prize, which recognizes individuals of extraordinary talent and dedication who seek to preserve and defend the institutions of free government and private enterprise, and the national Roe Award for achievement in public policy. One of her most unexpected awards was when Hockey Magazine named her the “64th most powerful person in hockey” for her leading role in blocking a multi-million-dollar subsidy to an NHL team.
A graduate of Georgetown University and New York University, Olsen unofficially started her public policy career at 11 years old, when she went door-to-door gathering signatures on a homemade petition to stop animal abuse. Born in Vermont, raised in Utah, Olsen resides in Arizona. She is a foster mother and an adoptive mother of three.
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