Former prosecutor indicted for emailing herself sealed Jack Smith files

A former federal prosecutor was indicted after prosecutors said she emailed herself a sealed Jack Smith file tied to Donald Trump’s classified-documents case, a move that put the Justice Department’s handling of politically sensitive evidence under fresh scrutiny.

Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, 62, was a managing assistant U.S. attorney in Fort Pierce, Florida, when prosecutors say she downloaded a sealed portion of Smith’s report to her government computer, renamed it Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf, and sent it to a personal Gmail account on Dec. 1, 2025. The indictment says the material was Volume II of Smith’s report, the section covering the classified-documents investigation that had remained secret from public view for more than a year.

The case goes to the heart of chain-of-custody and institutional trust. Judge Aileen Cannon ordered on Jan. 21, 2025, that the Justice Department and its employees could not release, share or transmit Volume II. She later permanently blocked release of the second volume on Feb. 23, 2026, extending that bar to Attorney General Pam Bondi or any successor. The sealed report has been at the center of a broader fight over what the public, Congress and the courts should be allowed to see in one of the most politically explosive federal prosecutions in recent memory.

Trump had been charged with retaining hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in January 2021 and obstructing efforts to recover them. Cannon dismissed the criminal case in July 2024 after ruling that Smith had been unlawfully appointed special counsel. The classified-documents report was prepared in January 2025, in the final days before Trump’s inauguration, and its second volume has stayed sealed amid litigation that has drawn in transparency groups and congressional Democrats seeking disclosure, while Trump and his former co-defendants have fought to keep it hidden.

Lineberger appeared in federal court in Fort Pierce, pleaded not guilty and was released without posting bond. The indictment does not resolve the larger dispute over the report, but it sharpens the question at its center: whether the Justice Department can safeguard evidence that touches a former president, a dismissed criminal case and a document so sensitive that a federal judge ordered it kept from view.