[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 13506]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           CAPRONI NOMINATION

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, on Monday the Senate confirmed two of the 
President's Federal judicial nominees. One of these nominees, Ms. 
Valerie Caproni, served for 8 years as the general counsel of the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I interacted with her in that 
capacity on a number of occasions as a member of the Select Committee 
on Intelligence. I will say frankly that I was troubled by some of the 
aggressive positions that Ms. Caproni took regarding domestic 
surveillance while she was the FBI's general counsel, and I understand 
why a number of my colleagues had serious concerns about her 
nomination.
  After giving the matter serious thought I decided to vote yes on Ms. 
Caproni's nomination based on the letter that she sent to Senator 
Durbin in July of this year, in which she stated that she would recuse 
herself from any cases that would require her to determine the legality 
of any surveillance programs about which she provided legal advice, in 
addition to any cases for which she had personal or supervisory 
involvement. This broad recusal commitment is somewhat unusual, but I 
believe it is appropriate given Ms. Caproni's long record of advocating 
for particular surveillance authorities as FBI general counsel. As the 
Senate has seen in recent years, Federal judges play a critical role in 
interpreting the government's surveillance authorities, so when 
considering nominees for judicial positions that are likely to consider 
surveillance cases it is important to ensure that these nominees will 
not be overly deferential to the government's interpretation of what 
its own surveillance authorities should be. I thank Senator Durbin for 
his work on this nomination, and I look forward to continuing to work 
with him and our other colleagues on this critically important issue.

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