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May 20, 2026 / 6:09 PM EDT
/ CBS News
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A former federal prosecutor was charged this week with emailing herself a report on the Justice Department's investigation into President Trump that a judge had kept under lock and key.Carmen Lineberger was indicted Tuesday on two counts of theft of government property, plus counts of concealing and removing a public record and altering a public record. She was arraigned Wednesday and pleaded not guilty. The charges focus on a report penned by former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, whose team charged Mr. Trump with trying to overturn his 2020 election loss and allegedly mishandling classified documents. The election-related parts of the report were released in mid-January 2025, but a week later, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon blocked former Attorney General Merrick Garland "or his successor(s)" from releasing the portion on classified documents, known as "Volume II."A newly unsealed indictment accuses Lineberger — previously the managing assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida — of downloading a copy of Volume II last December and saving it under the file name "Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf." She then allegedly emailed it from her Justice Department account to her personal account.Lineberger was also accused of downloading portions of an internal Justice Department memorandum and emailing it to herself in September 2025. Those records were allegedly saved under the file name "Chocolate_cake_recipe.pdf."The indictment does not specify what, if anything, Lineberger allegedly planned to do with the documents.CBS News has reached out to Lineberger's attorney for comment.
