Ex-Prosecutor Charged After Emailing Sealed Trump Report to Personal Email

A former Department of Justice prosecutor is facing felony charges after emailing herself a sealed Biden-era investigative report concerning Donald Trump and attempting to conceal the document by renaming it as a cake recipe, federal authorities said Wednesday.

Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, who worked as a managing assistant U.S. attorney in Florida, faces two counts of theft of government money or property along with additional charges related to allegedly altering the documents, according to the indictment.

In early 2025, Lineberger received a copy of an internal report ‘related to a pending federal criminal investigation,’ which she later sent from her Justice Department inbox to her personal email in December 2025, the indictment states. The report was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where she was employed.

Prosecutors said Lineberger sought to hide evidence of the document by changing its name to ‘Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf’ before saving it to her government-issued computer.

The indictment did not provide further details about the report’s content but characterized it as blocked from public release under an order from U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon.

Cannon, whom Trump has previously praised as a ‘model of what a judge should be,’ barred former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith from discussing or sharing any findings from his investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of White House documents at the end of his first term.

Smith also led an investigation into Trump’s alleged plot to obstruct the 2020 election. Both cases were dropped after Trump secured a second term; Justice Department policy protects sitting presidents from criminal prosecution.

‘The illicit product of an unlawful investigation and prosecution belongs in the dustbin of history,’ federal prosecutors said in a January court filing condemning Smith’s report.

Meanwhile, advocacy groups have sought to unseal the report through court appeals.

It remains unclear why Lineberger sent the report to herself. She faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison if convicted.