Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Staff Attorney, Eighth Texas Court of Appeals
David Vandenberg is a staff attorney with the Eighth Texas Court of Appeals in El Paso. He is also the President-Elect of the Texas Association of Appellate Court Attorneys. Prior to working at the Texas Court of Appeals, he was Supervising Attorney for the Third Judicial District Court in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the second largest court of general jurisdiction in the state. He served as summer clerk at the Supreme Court of Micronesia, a former American territory, and at the Texas Third Court of Appeals in Austin. In addition to his law degree from John Marshall School of Law in Atlanta, he earned a doctorate in philosophy with a concentration in epistemology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with highest awards of the graduate faculty. He is the author of a highly cited article on royalty determination for horizontal and stacked (fracked) oil and gas wells in cross-boundary contexts with the Journal of World Business and Energy Law at Oxford University Press and is a designated reporter for developments in American law for OUP. He has been invited to speak on legal aspects of fracking technology at international energy conferences in Europe and Asia.
Deputy Director, Election Reform Program, Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law
Director, Campaign Finance Strategy, Campaign Legal Center
Erin Chlopak joined the Campaign Legal Center in August 2018, after spending nearly a decade working on a wide range of campaign finance issues in the Federal Election Commission’s Office of General Counsel. Her areas of focus include CLC’s appellate and district court litigation and its Federal Reform and State & Local Reform programs.
From 2017 to 2018, Erin served as the head of the FEC’s Policy Division, overseeing all of the Division’s work on FEC regulations, advisory opinions, and other legal policy guidance. From 2009 to 2017, Erin worked in the FEC’s Litigation Division as a staff attorney and then as Assistant General Counsel, litigating numerous constitutional and other campaign finance cases. She has argued before federal district and appellate courts, including before the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Holmes v. FEC, in which the court unanimously upheld the federal per-election limits on individual contributions to candidates.
Erin began her legal career as a litigation associate at Sullivan & Cromwell, after clerking for Judge Helen Gillmor of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii. She received her undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and her law degree from American University’s Washington College of Law.
Senior Attorney, National Taxpayers Union Foundation
Tyler Martinez is a Senior Attorney at the Taxpayer Defense Center, the strategic litigation arm of National Taxpayers Union Foundation. He has experience setting up nonprofit public interest arms for multiple organizations in the Washington, DC area and thus has experience in First Amendment, Tax, and Administrative Law. He has practiced strategic litigation against government overreach since 2011, handling federal and state cases across the country.
Tyler’s interest in strategic public interest work and in tax law comes down to the simple principle: getting the government out of people’s business. Transparency is for the government, but privacy is for the people. He finds and focuses on examples of government overreach particularly those involving use of private information, dragnet data collection, and other attacks on privacy of association.
Tyler earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado Law School, while winning accolades for his advocacy skills and serving as Executive Editor of the Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law. He is licensed to practice law in Colorado and the District of Columbia. He is further admitted to the bars of the following federal courts: Supreme Court of the United States, D.C. Circuit, First Circuit, Second Circuit, Third Circuit, Fourth Circuit, Fifth Circuit, Eighth Circuit, Tenth Circuit, and various federal district courts across the country.
National Affairs Columnist, National Review
John Fund is National Affairs Columnist for National Review magazine and a on-air analyst on the Fox News Channel. He is considered a notable expert on American politics and the nexus between politics and economics.
He previously served as a columnist and editorial board member for The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several books, including Who's Counting: Bow Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote At Risk (Encounter Books, 2012); Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books, 2008) and The Dangers of Regulation Through Litigation (ATRA Press, 2008). He worked as a research analyst for the California Legislature in Sacramento before beginning his journalism career as a reporter for the syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak.
Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, called him "the Tom Paine of the modern Congressional reform movement." He has won awards from the Institute for Justice, The School Choice Aliance and the Warren Brooks award for journalistic excellence from the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Senior Attorney, National Taxpayers Union Foundation
Tyler Martinez is a Senior Attorney at the Taxpayer Defense Center, the strategic litigation arm of National Taxpayers Union Foundation. He has experience setting up nonprofit public interest arms for multiple organizations in the Washington, DC area and thus has experience in First Amendment, Tax, and Administrative Law. He has practiced strategic litigation against government overreach since 2011, handling federal and state cases across the country.
Tyler’s interest in strategic public interest work and in tax law comes down to the simple principle: getting the government out of people’s business. Transparency is for the government, but privacy is for the people. He finds and focuses on examples of government overreach particularly those involving use of private information, dragnet data collection, and other attacks on privacy of association.
Tyler earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado Law School, while winning accolades for his advocacy skills and serving as Executive Editor of the Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law. He is licensed to practice law in Colorado and the District of Columbia. He is further admitted to the bars of the following federal courts: Supreme Court of the United States, D.C. Circuit, First Circuit, Second Circuit, Third Circuit, Fourth Circuit, Fifth Circuit, Eighth Circuit, Tenth Circuit, and various federal district courts across the country.
Partner, Baker & Hostetler LLP
Prior to joining BakerHostetler, Allen spent 15 years at the center of the national debate over political regulation. At the FEC, he worked across party lines to restore a key regulatory player to functioning order after years of neglect and partisan gridlock. Those efforts led to the first adoption of a new regulation in over a decade, reform of the commission’s investigations and interagency practices, and more than 150 Statements of Reasons interpreting the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). Substantively, Allen prioritized developments at the edges of the FEC’s jurisdiction, particularly those cases where federal election rules conflict with broader principles of corporate, administrative, and constitutional law.
Previously, Allen spent nearly a decade representing organizations across the political spectrum in First Amendment challenges to state and federal laws governing civil society. His practice emphasized motions and appeals, including a dozen arguments before federal appellate and state supreme courts, and appearances before regulatory agencies. In addition to purely campaign finance matters, Allen's cases included the first federal lawsuit in decades addressing the constitutional scope of lobbying laws, litigation establishing the standard for constitutional challenges to FECA under that statute’s specialized review procedures and the successful defense of a state attorney general leading to the invalidation of an FEC regulation.
Senior Attorney, National Taxpayers Union Foundation
Tyler Martinez is a Senior Attorney at the Taxpayer Defense Center, the strategic litigation arm of National Taxpayers Union Foundation. He has experience setting up nonprofit public interest arms for multiple organizations in the Washington, DC area and thus has experience in First Amendment, Tax, and Administrative Law. He has practiced strategic litigation against government overreach since 2011, handling federal and state cases across the country.
Tyler’s interest in strategic public interest work and in tax law comes down to the simple principle: getting the government out of people’s business. Transparency is for the government, but privacy is for the people. He finds and focuses on examples of government overreach particularly those involving use of private information, dragnet data collection, and other attacks on privacy of association.
Tyler earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado Law School, while winning accolades for his advocacy skills and serving as Executive Editor of the Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law. He is licensed to practice law in Colorado and the District of Columbia. He is further admitted to the bars of the following federal courts: Supreme Court of the United States, D.C. Circuit, First Circuit, Second Circuit, Third Circuit, Fourth Circuit, Fifth Circuit, Eighth Circuit, Tenth Circuit, and various federal district courts across the country.
Partner, Baker & Hostetler LLP
Prior to joining BakerHostetler, Allen spent 15 years at the center of the national debate over political regulation. At the FEC, he worked across party lines to restore a key regulatory player to functioning order after years of neglect and partisan gridlock. Those efforts led to the first adoption of a new regulation in over a decade, reform of the commission’s investigations and interagency practices, and more than 150 Statements of Reasons interpreting the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). Substantively, Allen prioritized developments at the edges of the FEC’s jurisdiction, particularly those cases where federal election rules conflict with broader principles of corporate, administrative, and constitutional law.
Previously, Allen spent nearly a decade representing organizations across the political spectrum in First Amendment challenges to state and federal laws governing civil society. His practice emphasized motions and appeals, including a dozen arguments before federal appellate and state supreme courts, and appearances before regulatory agencies. In addition to purely campaign finance matters, Allen's cases included the first federal lawsuit in decades addressing the constitutional scope of lobbying laws, litigation establishing the standard for constitutional challenges to FECA under that statute’s specialized review procedures and the successful defense of a state attorney general leading to the invalidation of an FEC regulation.
Partner, Graves Garrett Greim LLC
Edward “Eddie” Greim focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation, free speech and election law, and internal investigations and whistleblower claims. He has been recognized for his successful representation of businesses and individuals in commercial litigation while also being named a “go-to” lawyer on policy and constitutional issues.
Eddie was named a Constitutional and Election Law Trailblazer by the National Law Journal in 2020. His free speech and election law practice has included numerous constitutional challenges to election and campaign finance laws; representation of clients in state and federal ethics and campaign finance enforcement actions and investigations; initiative petition drafting and litigation; litigation and advice regarding First Amendment protections for petition circulation; representation of not-for-profit clients before state regulators; litigation of state and federal redistricting issues; and advice on campaign and election law compliance.
Eddie complements his trial work in complex, high-profile commercial and constitutional cases with oral advocacy and briefing in important appeals. Recognized as a Missouri Lawyers Media POWER 30 Appellate Attorney in 2021, he has argued before the Missouri and Kansas supreme courts multiple times, other state appellate courts across the country, and before the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth U.S. Courts of Appeals.
Eddie’s notable work for clients includes:
Recovering substantial compensation and injunctive relief for plaintiffs, in complex multiyear litigation, as lead counsel in the first and only nationwide class action certified against the Internal Revenue Service for violating taxpayer protection statutes when it targeted hundreds of groups based on their political viewpoints.
Successful First Amendment challenge to Missouri’s 2016 campaign finance restrictions.
Successful challenge to a vast, multiyear, secret criminal investigation into Wisconsin political groups and nonprofits, and follow-up challenge to expose role of state ethics board which secretly aided the investigation and was later dissolved by the legislature.
U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief for the National Republican Redistricting Trust in the 2019 Rucho litigation, and federal and state redistricting litigation and advice since 2011.
Challenges under the First Amendment in federal court, and in briefing to the Michigan Supreme Court on state constitutional grounds, to unprecedented emergency powers claimed by Michigan Governor in 2020.
Representation of numerous public officials and private citizens who are subject to “lawfare” attacks based on their political viewpoints or policy objectives.
Oversight of multiple internal investigations.
Eddie received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 2002, where he taught on the Board of Student Advisers, received the Dean’s Award for Leadership, and served as President of the Harvard Catholic Law Students Association. He received two bachelor’s degrees, summa cum laude, in economics and political science from the University of Missouri.
A native of Excelsior Springs, Missouri, Eddie lives in Kansas City with his family. He enjoys Missouri and military history. On many weekends, he can be found with his wife and daughters exploring sites of local interest. He enjoys reading and debating and has given presentations or organized discussions at numerous gatherings, formal and informal, of professional and personal interest.
Deputy Executive Director, Campaign Legal Center
Tara Malloy joined the Campaign Legal Center in November 2006. She litigates a wide range of campaign finance and election law cases in state and federal court, and has expertise in campaign finance, lobbying, and congressional ethics issues.
Ms. Malloy has spoken at conferences and events nationwide on election law and has appeared as a legal expert on various news programs, including on MSNBC, PBS and NPR. She has written articles on campaign finance and ethics issues for various publications, including Politico and the Legal Times, and is frequently quoted in national news publications, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Time, and Roll Call.
Ms. Malloy also has extensive experience in practical campaign finance enforcement, having served as an associate counsel at the New York City Campaign Finance Board prior to joining the Legal Center. There, she advised the Board regarding the administration of New York City’s public financing system, represented the Board counsel in state and federal courts on various campaign finance matters, and drafted legislation and implementing rules.
Previously, Tara Malloy worked in the litigation practice at the New York law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. A former Fulbright Scholar, Ms. Malloy is a graduate of Yale Law School and Emory University. Ms. Malloy is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, the State of New York, the Supreme Court of the United States and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Partner, Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC
Jason Torchinsky is a partner at Holtzman Vogel Josefiak PLLC, specializing in campaign finance, election law, lobbying disclosure and issue advocacy groups. Politico recently named him one of the “50 Politicos to Watch,” and in 2007, Campaigns and Elections Magazine named him a “Rising Star of Politics.”
In addition to his practice counseling clients on compliance with campaign finance, ethics laws, lobbying disclosure and election laws, Mr. Torchinsky has served as lead counsel in a number of litigation matters. Representative matters in the redistricting area include Louisiana House of Representatives v. Holder (D.D.C.) (Section 5 pre-clearance action), City of Sandy Springs v. Holder (D.D.C.) (Section 5 bailout action), and Fletcher v. Lamone (D. Md.) (challenging Maryland’s Congressional Districting map). In the campaign finance context, he is currently representing clients in Alliance for America’s Future v. State (Nevada Supreme Court) and Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission (D.D.C.) (Representing intervenor defendants). He has also represented Virginia candidates in recounts and voter registration challenges before various Virginia Circuit Courts.
Mr. Torchinsky frequently lectures on campaign finance redistricting and ethics related subjects and provides commentary to the media on election related matters.
Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Torchinsky was Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice. During the 2004 election cycle, he served as Deputy General Counsel to Bush-Cheney ’04 and Deputy General Counsel to the 2005 Presidential Inaugural Committee.
He holds a B.A. in Government and Public Policy from the College of William and Mary and a J.D. from the College of William and Mary School of Law. He is a member of the Virginia Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, the Republican National Lawyers Association and the Federalist Society.
Director, Campaign Finance Strategy, Campaign Legal Center
Erin Chlopak joined the Campaign Legal Center in August 2018, after spending nearly a decade working on a wide range of campaign finance issues in the Federal Election Commission’s Office of General Counsel. Her areas of focus include CLC’s appellate and district court litigation and its Federal Reform and State & Local Reform programs.
From 2017 to 2018, Erin served as the head of the FEC’s Policy Division, overseeing all of the Division’s work on FEC regulations, advisory opinions, and other legal policy guidance. From 2009 to 2017, Erin worked in the FEC’s Litigation Division as a staff attorney and then as Assistant General Counsel, litigating numerous constitutional and other campaign finance cases. She has argued before federal district and appellate courts, including before the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Holmes v. FEC, in which the court unanimously upheld the federal per-election limits on individual contributions to candidates.
Erin began her legal career as a litigation associate at Sullivan & Cromwell, after clerking for Judge Helen Gillmor of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii. She received her undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and her law degree from American University’s Washington College of Law.
Senior Attorney, National Taxpayers Union Foundation
Tyler Martinez is a Senior Attorney at the Taxpayer Defense Center, the strategic litigation arm of National Taxpayers Union Foundation. He has experience setting up nonprofit public interest arms for multiple organizations in the Washington, DC area and thus has experience in First Amendment, Tax, and Administrative Law. He has practiced strategic litigation against government overreach since 2011, handling federal and state cases across the country.
Tyler’s interest in strategic public interest work and in tax law comes down to the simple principle: getting the government out of people’s business. Transparency is for the government, but privacy is for the people. He finds and focuses on examples of government overreach particularly those involving use of private information, dragnet data collection, and other attacks on privacy of association.
Tyler earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado Law School, while winning accolades for his advocacy skills and serving as Executive Editor of the Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law. He is licensed to practice law in Colorado and the District of Columbia. He is further admitted to the bars of the following federal courts: Supreme Court of the United States, D.C. Circuit, First Circuit, Second Circuit, Third Circuit, Fourth Circuit, Fifth Circuit, Eighth Circuit, Tenth Circuit, and various federal district courts across the country.
Resolved: That Congress Should Pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act
El Paso Lawyers Chapter - Online Event
Is It Transparency or Is It Censorship? Washington Post v. McManus
Erin Chlopak, Tyler Martinez
In Washington Post v. McManus, various newspapers brought suit to strike down a new Maryland law...
Is It Transparency or Is It Censorship? Washington Post v. McManus
TeleforumSecond Annual Missouri Meeting at the Capitol
Mobs, Millionaires, & the Media: Can Fair Elections and Fundamental Rights Co-Exist?
Jefferson City, MOPokemon Go To the Polls: A Discussion on FEC Regulation of Campaign Advertisements in the Digital Age
The Battle Over Donor Privacy: Nonprofits and the Abuse of Campaign Disclosure Laws
Denver, ColoradoCampaign Finance Reform
Should the IRS Be Regulating Politics?
Topics
Supreme Court Preview: Center for Competitive Politics v. Harris
Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to take the case of Center for...
Crime and Politics: Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules in "John Doe" Investigation
Teleforum