A former Department of Justice prosecutor has been charged with stealing a secret report regarding a criminal investigation into Donald Trump and emailing it to herself under the guise of a cake recipe.
Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, 62, who worked as a managing assistant at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of theft of government property, one count of concealing and removing a public record, and one count of altering a public record.
She is alleged to have stolen a copy of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s highly anticipated report on his investigation into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, which a pro-Trump judge ordered to remain under seal.
Lineberger allegedly emailed the report to her personal email account in December 2025 and renamed the file “Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf” in order to avoid detection, according to the indictment. She is also accused of emailing portions of an internal DOJ memorandum to herself and changing the document title to “Chocolate_Cake_Recipe.pdf.”
The report that Lineberger is alleged to have emailed to herself was the so-called “Volume II” report on Smith’s federal classified documents investigation into Trump, in which the president faced 40 felony charges.
The case never went to trial after it was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in July 2024, after she ruled that Smith was unlawfully appointed by then–Attorney General Merrick Garland because his appointment was not first approved by the Senate.
Cannon—who was nominated to the bench by Trump and made numerous other decisions that benefited the president while overseeing the case—temporarily blocked the release of Smith’s classified documents report last January, just days before Trump was due to return to the White House.
The judge permanently blocked its release in February 2026, arguing that releasing potentially damaging information about the president and his two co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who had not been convicted of the charges they faced, would present a “manifest injustice.”
“Carmen Lineberger allegedly emailed the confidential material to her own personal email, disguising it as dessert recipes to conceal it from record searches,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement.
“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.”
Smith’s other report into Trump’s alleged criminal attempt to overturn the 2020 election results was released by Garland last January, just days before Trump was due to re-enter the White House.
The report detailed how the special counsel believed there was “sufficient” evidence to prosecute Trump if the case went to trial.
Smith dropped that investigation in the wake of Trump’s 2024 election victory, as the DOJ has a long-standing policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents.
Lineberger faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
