The Colleyville branch office of Houston-based law firm Nistico, Crouch & Kessler, P.C., serves as the headquarters for a radical-left political entity, the Texas Public Education Defense Fund (TPEDF).
The Dallas Express has obtained thousands of emails and FOIA requests from TPEDF’s Senior Legal Director, Rachel Elizabeth Wall, a Grapevine resident who works as an attorney and is listed as a partner at Nistico, Crouch & Kessler on her LinkedIn profile and other professional sources.
Wall has sent over 6,000 emails to the Grapevine-Colleyville ISD (GCISD) Board of Trustees and district administrators in recent years from her Nistico, Crouch & Kessler email address during business hours. District officials say the handling of Wall’s emails and FOIA requests (which they are legally obligated to do) has cost the district over $3 million to date.
GCISD, along with neighboring Tarrant County districts Southlake-Carroll ISD and Keller ISD, have been targets statewide and nationally by radical-left groups since Republicans assumed majority political control of those districts’ Trustee Boards, who have rooted out critical race theory curricula, and implemented financial and other reforms.
Among others, TPEDF is a rebrand of a prior leftist group, the Texas Bipartisan Alliance. The groups operate as 501(c)(4) organizations, according to public records. Such groups do not have to disclose their donors, leading to accusations of “dark money” politics.
TPEDF also frequently collaborates with another radical-left Grapevine political activist, Danee Mastagni, a partner in Fort Worth-based AMM Political Strategies, a voter contact firm that offers phone services for Democratic political campaigns and progressive grassroots advocacy.
Collectively, these groups organized to support the successful campaign of GCISD Trustee Matt Faust, who was elected in May specifically to roll back conservative reforms made in GCISD in recent years.
Un-Woke ISD Buried with Avalanche of Emails at Taxpayer Expense
Since then, Wall has sent over 6,500 emails and Public Information Act requests to GCISD. District officials told DX that the average cost to review Wall’s inquiries is $173.75 per email and requires an average of three staff members to handle a single email from Wall.
Additionally, responses to Wall’s emails often include the time and cost of the school district attorneys to formulate a response.
Wall has also been a prominent fixture at GCISD board of trustee meetings, including protests over the removal of former Colleyville Heritage High School Principal James Whitfield.
A vocal proponent of critical race theory, Whitfield was placed on administrative leave in 2020 and ultimately terminated after encouraging on-campus BLM protests, student walkouts, and emailing parents to evaluate their white privilege.
Whitfield faced criticism from parents and school officials for his purported concerning communication with teachers and staff, which included sending a contentious email to all families, faculty, and staff regarding the “recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor,” as noted in earlier stories by The Dallas Express.
Whitfield filed a lawsuit against the school district and one of its conservative trustees. Following a hearing that Wall allegedly attended, a state judge dismissed his case and ordered Whitfield to pay the school district’s attorney’s fees in full.
After appealing his loss, Whitfield’s lawyers withdrew from representing him, and he is now representing himself on appeal.
Whitfield is currently under investigation by the Texas Education Agency and embroiled in another controversy at Euless-based charter school Treetops School International after being accused of “mismanagement and misdeeds” by school parents, as reported in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
GCISD district officials allege that Wall is purposefully sowing discord and distrust within the district for political purposes with her promotion of Whitfield and email harassment campaign, often citing the legal expenses the district has incurred to make curriculum and financial reforms that her radical left organizations oppose.
Like a Bad Neighbor, State Farm is There?
A DX investigation into Wall’s firm, Nistico, Crouch & Kessler, suggests the firm may be a “captive” alternative legal service provider (ALSP) to insurer State Farm. A captive legal firm is a law firm owned and operated by an entity other than a traditional partnership of lawyers, often an insurance company or a corporation.
These firms raise ethical concerns because the lawyers within them may face conflicts of interest, potentially prioritizing the needs of their parent company over those of their clients.
DX made multiple inquiries to State Farm to confirm and to ask if State Farm had knowledge that TPEDF was operating out of Nistico, Crouch & Kessler’s Colleyville branch. State Farm did not respond.