A former law clerk to the federal judge who dismissed the classified documents case against President Donald Trump is now serving in the Justice Department directly under Trump’s former defense lawyer Todd Blanche, who is now serving as the nation’s number-two law enforcement official.
Christopher-James DeLorenz has been serving as a Counsel in the Deputy Attorney General’s office since President Trump took office in January, according to officials and DeLorenz’s public LinkedIn page.
DeLorenz served for 10 months as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, during a period in which she presided over then-special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for alleging retaining classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them.
According to his LinkedIn page, DeLorenz departed Cannon’s office in August 2024, just a month after Cannon tossed out the case against Trump, in which she bucked decades of legal precedent by finding that Smith had been unconstitutionally appointed.
It’s unclear whether Blanche, who was Trump’s lead attorney in the classified documents case and took office early last month following a narrow confirmation by the U.S. Senate, had any direct involvement in DeLorenz’s hiring.
Trump has already staffed the senior-most ranks of the DOJ with attorneys who previously represented him in a range of criminal and civil matters, as part of a broader effort to reassert control over a department that brought two criminal prosecutions against him after he left office in 2021.
While clerking for a district judge is often a path to a senior job in an administration, DeLorenz’s position is the first known appointment to the DOJ of a former clerk for Judge Cannon, whose dismissal of the documents case handed Trump a massive political victory.
President Donald Trump crosses the South Lawn after exiting Marine One at White House in Washington, April 6, 2025.
Bonnie Cash/Pool/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in 2020, was criticized by numerous legal experts over several rulings that helped support Trump’s attorneys’ strategy to delay bringing the case to trial.
In a statement to ABC News, a Justice Department spokesperson said, “The Department of Justice has hired highly qualified and skilled attorneys to effectively carry out our mission of ending the weaponization of justice, defending executive authority from judicial overreach, and Making America Safe Again.”
Judge Cannon’s chambers did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Cannon previously responded to accusations of granting Trump favorable treatment in an order denying a request for her to recuse herself from presiding over the criminal case of Ryan Routh, who was charged with attempting to assassinate Trump at his golf club in Florida in September of last year.
“I have never spoken to or met former President Trump, except in connection with his required presence at an official judicial proceeding, through counsel,” Cannon wrote in an October 2024 ruling.
“I have no ‘relationship to [Trump]’ in any reasonable sense of the phrase. I follow my oath to administer justice faithfully and impartially, in accordance with the Constitution and the laws of this country,” she wrote.
