Politico reported:
TODAY IN CONGRESS – The Senate meets at 2 p.m. and at 5:30 p.m. votes on the nominations of Valerie E. Caproni and Vernon S. Broderick to be United States District Judges for the Southern District of New York.The Guardian had this to say about Caproni:
A former senior FBI official implicated in surveillance abuses is poised to become a federal judge in one of the US's most important courts for terrorism cases.Caproni, the FBI's General Counsel from 2003-2011, lied to Congress with no consequences:
In an April 2008 House hearing, Caproni told lawmakers that if a phone number obtained from a telephone company using a nonjudicial subpoena ostensibly authorized by the Patriot Act was unrelated to a "currently open investigation, and there was no emergency at the time we received the records, the records are removed from our files and destroyed".
In fact, the NSA, at the time of Caproni's testimony and today, stores phone records such as phone numbers on practically all Americans for up to five years, whether or not they are connected to an "open investigation".
Caproni left "public service" to work for Northrop Grumman, a huge defense and intelligence contractor. Northrop's latest 10-K stated:
We conduct the majority of our business with the U.S. Government, principally the Department of Defense (DoD) and intelligence community.
Northrop named her Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Litigation and Investigations.
Rather than face perjury for false testimony Caproni stands to land a federal judgeship, courtesy of President Obama's nomination. How close did she get to that plum appointment in today's Senate meetings?
