A former federal prosecutor in Florida has been indicted for allegedly emailing herself documents that the court had ordered not to be shared, related to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal prosecution of President Donald Trump — and the Department of Justice says she disguised the documents as cake recipes.

Prior to the president getting elected to his second term, Smith had been pursuing criminal cases against Trump accusing him of mishandling classified documents and keeping them at his residence at Mar-a-Lago and for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. When Trump won the 2024 election, that was the effective end of the criminal cases due to long-standing DOJ policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.

Last December, Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee that his office’s investigation “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power” and ” also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”

The 9-page indictment was filed against Carmen Mercedes Lineberger in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Lineberger previously served as the Managing Assistant U.S. Attorney of the Fort Pierce, Florida branch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in that district.

According to the indictment, Lineberger received copies of Smith’s “Volume II Report” related to Trump’s prosecution on January 16, 2025. U.S. District for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, who had been assigned to the case, “issued an order regarding the Report, which prohibited ‘the Department of Justice, its officers, agents, officials, and employees from [] releasing, sharing, or transmitting [the Report] outside the Department of Justice, or [] otherwise releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions in [the Report] or in drafts thereof.'”

Lawsuits have been filed by media organizations and others challenging Cannon’s sealing of Smith’s reports and other matters related to the case, arguing that it is in the public interest of the American people to disclose the files.

Cannon’s order “has remained in full force and effect” since it was issued, the indictment continued.

According to the indictment, “[o]n or about September 22, 2025, LINEBERGER created an electronic document on her government-issued computer consisting of portions of internal DOJ electronic messages LINEBERGER had received on her DOJ email account, as well as portions of an internal DOJ memorandum containing header and footer markings “FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY – INTERNAL DOJ USE ONLY” and saved the compiled document with the file name ‘Chocolate cake recipe.pdf,'” and then emailed that document to herself from her DOJ email to her personal Hotmail email account, as an attachment to an message with a subject line of “chocolate cake recipe.”

Lineberger is similarly accused of “download[ing] an electronic copy of the Report to her government-issued computer, alter[ing] the original file name of the Report to ‘Bundt_ Cake_Recipe.pdf’ and sav[ing] the re-named file to the desktop of her government-issued computer,” on December 1, 2025, and then emailing that file to her personal Gmail account in two separate messages that same day.

The indictment then lists four felony counts against Lineberger, saying she “did willfully and knowingly embezzle, steal, and convert to her own use” the internal DOJ communications listed in the indictment and Smith’s report, and that she “did knowingly alter, conceal, and cover up a record and document with the intent to impede, obstruct, and influence the proper administration of compliance” with Judge Cannon’s order.

FBI Director Kash Patel announced the indictment on his social media, writing, ” a former managing assistant U.S. Attorney who supported Jack Smith’s politicized investigation of President Trump has been charged with stealing the confidential investigation documents.”

“Carmen Lineberger allegedly emailed the confidential material to her own personal email, disguising them as dessert recipes to conceal them from record searches,” Patel continued. “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.”

According to a report on the indictment by ABC News, Lineberger made her initial appearance Wednesday at the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach, Florida. She entered a not guilty plea, and her attorney declined to comment when contacted by reporters.

“It’s not immediately clear based on court papers unsealed Wednesday if prosecutors will argue that Lineberger intended to leak the contents of the report,” the ABC News report noted.

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