A former senior federal prosecutor in Florida is accused of swiping a sealed portion of Jack Smith's report on President Trump's classified-documents case and hiding it under the name "Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf." Managing Assistant US Attorney Carmen Mercedes Lineberger was indicted in federal court in Fort Pierce on four counts, including theft of government property and unlawfully removing and altering public records, after allegedly emailing the sealed volume from her Justice Department account to her personal Gmail account on Dec. 1, 2025, CNBC reports.
Lineberger worked at the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida and managed the Fort Pierce branch. The document in question is Volume II of former special counsel Smith's report on the now-abandoned prosecution over Trump's hoarding of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago. US District Judge Aileen Cannon had explicitly barred the Justice Department and its employees from sharing that volume in a Jan. 21, 2025 order. Cannon previously tossed the case in July 2024, finding Smith's appointment unconstitutional. The DOJ initially appealed, but later walked away after Trump won a second term, citing the department's policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
According to the indictment, several months before she sent the Smith document, Lineberger emailed herself a document with portions of internal DOJ messages, calling the file sent to her personal account "chocolate_cake_recipe.pdf," the AP reports. The indictment doesn't state why Lineberger would have wanted to send herself the files. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges, including destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations, reports the New York Times. That charge, the most serious, could send her to prison for up to 20 years.
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