Former federal prosecutor charged over leak of sealed Trump report

A former federal prosecutor was indicted after allegedly sending herself a sealed report on Donald Trump’s classified-documents case and hiding it behind a filename that looked like a dessert recipe. Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, 62, of Port St. Lucie, Florida, was accused of using her Justice Department email account to forward Volume II of Jack Smith’s report to her personal email under the name Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf.

The indictment charges Lineberger with theft of government property and with concealing, removing, mutilating, falsifying, or altering public records. One Justice Department release said the property counts involved government property valued at less than $1,000. She pleaded not guilty at a court appearance in West Palm Beach, and her attorney declined to comment.

Lineberger once served as managing assistant U.S. attorney in the Fort Pierce branch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, which makes the allegations especially striking inside a department that depends on chain-of-custody rules and strict handling of sealed material. Prosecutors say the report at issue was not public: it was the classified-documents volume of Jack Smith’s two-part report on Trump.

Smith’s election-related volume was released in January 2025, but the classified-documents volume stayed locked down. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon first blocked its release on January 21, 2025, then permanently barred it on February 23, 2026. Cannon said release would create a manifest injustice and could unfairly prejudice Trump co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira.

The indictment says the alleged concealment went beyond one file. It says Lineberger sent internal Justice Department messages and an internal memorandum in September 2025 under the filename Chocolate_cake_recipe.pdf, then sent the sealed report in December 2025 as Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf. The filing does not explain her motive.

The case puts a new spotlight on the safeguards surrounding one of the department’s most sensitive Trump-era investigations. Smith’s classified-documents case accused Trump of illegally retaining dozens of classified records at Mar-a-Lago and obstructing efforts to recover them, and Smith charged Trump, Nauta, and de Oliveira in 2023. The sealed report remained out of public view even as the Justice Department and a federal judge clashed over whether it should ever be released.

In response, FBI Director Kash Patel attacked the original probe, posting that “this FBI will not hesitate to bring to account those who violated the trust of the American public in an investigation that should've never been brought to begin with.” The indictment now turns a fight over a sealed report into a test of whether the Justice Department could protect its own most sensitive records from inside its own walls.