Florida prosecutor charged with emailing herself the most sought-after documents from Jack Smith’s Trump investigation
By Casey Gannon, Paula Reid, Katelyn Polantz, CNN
(CNN) — A former managing assistant US attorney in the Southern District of Florida has been charged with emailing herself the most sought-after, confidential Justice Department records in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of President Donald Trump, masquerading them as dessert recipes.
Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, 62, faces two felony charges related to her handling of Volume II of Smith’s final report, which detailed Smith’s findings that Trump and two co-defendants who worked for him in 2021 mishandled national security documents from his first presidency and attempted to stymy federal efforts to have the records returned.
One of those charges includes an allegation that Lineberger intended to flout a court order from federal judge Aileen Cannon, who had overseen the case against Trump and the two others, after the judge placed Volume II under seal in January 2025.
Lineberger also was charged with two misdemeanor counts of theft of government money or property, valued less than $1,000, for each time she is said to have sent herself the document.
She entered a plea of not guilty on Wednesday and wasn’t detained or required to post any bond following her arrest. An attorney representing Lineberger declined to comment.
Prosecutors allege Lineberger first received a copy of Volume II in her Justice Department email account days before Cannon sealed it.
They say that months later, in September, she first forwarded the report to her personal Hotmail email account, with the subject line “chocolate cake recipe.”
In early December, prosecutors say she also emailed it to her personal Gmail account, with the file renamed “Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf.”
Lineberger was in a supervisory role in the Southern District of Florida US Attorney’s Office, based in Fort Pierce, where the Trump case was being prosecuted. She had worked in the US Attorney’s Office for nearly two decades, ultimately retiring from the Justice Department in December.
While she was not on the special counsel team, the US Attorney’s Office played a supporting role to some parts of Smith’s work, including before the special counsel was appointed and Trump’s home at his Mar-a-Lago resort was searched in 2022.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, has maintained the report cannot be released to protect the rights of Trump’s co-defendants, who never went to trial. Cannon wrote in a 15-page ruling that is was “not customary” for a prosecutor to release findings publicly for a case that was dismissed.
Cannon had tossed the case against Trump before he was re-elected to a second term, citing that the appointment of Smith as a special counsel was unconstitutional.
Top Trump Justice Department officials, who were Trump’s personal attorneys on the classified documents case, and lawyers for his two codefendants have continued to argue in litigation over the record that Smith’s filings should never be released and were invalid.
Because of her role in the office, prosecutors based in northern Florida rather than southern Florida are overseeing the case as it proceeds in West Palm Beach’s federal court.
Still, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who had been the lead defense attorney for Trump in the classified documents case that Volume II describes, has his name in the signature block of prosecutors on Lineberger’s indictment.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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