Two Southern District Nominations Advance

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved with a voice vote the nominations of Valerie Caproni and Vernon Broderick to the Southern District bench. Caproni, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation general counsel, is vice president and deputy general counsel at Northrop Grumman Corp., and has previously worked at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said in the statement that while he did not hold Caproni’s nomination in committee, he reserves his right to do so on the Senate floor. His dispute with her goes back more than six years, when Caproni was at the FBI and Grassley requested copies of unclassified emails related to the use of National Security letters issued by the agency. "I only received a few of these emails, and they were heavily redacted, so in 2008 I asked for the rest. Ms. Caproni was general counsel of the FBI at the time and told me that the documents I was waiting for were on her desk, awaiting her review," Grassley said in the statement. "Well, it’s now 2013 and as of her hearing, I had never received these documents." Grassley said he remains unsatisfied with the documents that have been produced so far.