Overview
- A federal indictment unsealed Wednesday charges Carmen Mercedes Lineberger with copying a sealed portion of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report and emailing it to her personal accounts under dessert-themed file names.
- Prosecutors allege she first received the Volume II on her DOJ account in January 2025 and later saved and sent parts of the report and internal DOJ memoranda to Hotmail and Gmail accounts with names such as “chocolate cake recipe” and “Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf.”
- Lineberger, who served as managing assistant U.S. attorney in Fort Pierce and was not on Smith’s special counsel team, pleaded not guilty at her arraignment and faces felony counts including theft of government property and alteration or concealment of public records.
- If convicted on the charged counts she could face up to 20 years in prison and the indictment says the transmissions violated a Judge Aileen Cannon order that barred DOJ staff from releasing or transmitting Volume II of Smith’s report.
- The indictment does not make clear whether prosecutors will allege intent to further leak the report beyond emailing it to herself, and the case adds pressure on DOJ to review document controls while separate litigants press to unseal Smith’s findings.