The Justice Department spent months building a case against a former federal prosecutor for allegedly sending herself a sealed report she was not supposed to have. This week, the department admitted it sent that same report to her defense team.
The Justice Department indicted Carmen Lineberger, the former managing assistant US attorney who ran the Fort Pierce branch of the Southern District of Florida, on May 20. The charges include destruction, alteration, or falsification of records, concealment of public records, and two counts of theft of government property under $1,000.
Prosecutors allege she saved copies of Volume II of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report, the sealed section covering Smith’s findings on Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, under file names like “chocolate cake recipe” before emailing them to her personal accounts. A special prosecutor from the Northern District of Florida is handling the case to avoid a conflict of interest.
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Discovery in that case is where things went sideways for the government. Prosecutors handed the defense flash drives of case-related material on June 3, and less than a week later, Lineberger’s lawyers flagged three documents that didn’t look like they belonged.
Prosecutors confirmed the files were copies of the Volume II report itself. According to a joint notice filed with US District Judge Aileen Cannon, the defense team stopped reading immediately, confirmed they hadn’t opened the report, deleted everything they’d downloaded, and returned the flash drives the same day. Prosecutors credited the defense team, writing that the government “acknowledges the professionalism and candor of defense counsel.”
The slip-up runs headlong into the same court order the government has spent over a year defending. Cannon, a Trump appointee overseeing the related classified documents case in South Florida, barred the Justice Department in January 2025 from sharing Volume II outside the department, and reaffirmed that order in February 2026 while declining to have the report destroyed.
Whether Lineberger’s defense team eventually gets legitimate access to the report remains unresolved. The government has separately asked Cannon to limit how much other sensitive material the defense can pass along, and the question of the Volume II report is still working through pending motions.
The 11th Circuit postponed a hearing on outside challenges to Cannon’s order on June 30, with no new date on the calendar.
