Lisa Graves is one of the nation’s foremost experts in exposing how special interests distort public policy and try to thwart the public’s interest in a thriving democracy and healthy planet.

She is the Executive Director of True North Research, a national investigative watchdog group that works with other journalists and researchers to shine a light on the dark money fueling regressive agendas targeting vital institutions in our republic, such as the courts and schools.

She served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Policy Development/Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, Chief Counsel for Nominations for Senator Patrick Leahy on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Deputy Chief of the Article III Judges Division of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and as an adjunct law professor at George Washington University Law School. She also served as the Senior Legislative Strategist for the ACLU on national security and civil liberties, and held other posts. She has been asked to testify as an expert before several committees in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

Her investigations have been featured in Ava DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated documentary the “13th,” in Showtime’s “Years of Living Dangerously,” in a PBS documentary narrated by Bill Moyers and entitled “The United States of ALEC,” and other films. Her research has been cited in critically acclaimed books including Dark Money by Jane Mayer, Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean, Give Us the Ballot by Ari Berman, Corporate Citizen by Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, The Fall of Wisconsin by Dan Kaufman, and several others. Her work is featured in several podcasts, including U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s “Making the Case,” Crooked Media and Rebecca Nagle’s “This Land,” Dahlia Lithwick’s “Amicus,” Vicky Ward’s new series on the Federalist Society called “Pipeline to Power,” Pod Save America, and Amy Westervelt’s “Drilled.”

Her op-eds have been published by the New York Times, the Guardian, TIME, Slate, and The Hill, and she has written for True North Research, PRWatch, Common Dreams, TruthOut, Ms., Washington Spectator, DeSmog, the Nation, In These Times, the Progressive, HuffPo, and Yes!. Her analysis has been cited in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Politico, ProPublica, Salon, the Trace, Grist, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Associated Press, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The Intercept, Vice, ESPN, Business Week, Roll Call, CQ, Newsday, the National Journal, Legal Times, Wired, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, USA Today, Rewire News, the Toronto Star, Agence France-Presse, and more.

She has been a frequent guest on MSNBC and has also appeared on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNBC, the BBC, the CBC, Sky News, the Laura Flanders Show, Democracy NOW!, and C-Span. She has also been a featured guest on major radio programs, including NPR’s Fresh Air, Morning Edition, and Marketplace Report, and on Deutschlandfunk, FAIR, Background Briefing with Ian Masters, the Nicole Sanders Show, Duncan Campbell’s Connections, the Thom Hartmann Show, BradBlog, the Rick Smith Show, the Zero Hour with R.J. Eskow, and more.