DOJ Lawyer Indicted Over Secret Trump Report
A former Miami-based Justice Department attorney is now facing federal charges over an alleged effort to move a sealed Jack Smith report out of government channels.
According to the indictment, Carmen Lineberger, who served as the Managing Assistant U.S. Attorney in Fort Pierce, Florida, is accused of taking a copy of the report tied to Trump’s classified documents case and sending it to her personal email account. Prosecutors say she used misleading file names like “chocolate cake recipe” and “bundt cake recipe” to hide what she was doing.
Lineberger, 62, was indicted on four felony counts: theft of government money or property valued at less than $1,000, destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations, and concealment, removal, or mutilation of public records. She pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she faces more than 20 years in prison based on the charges tied to record destruction alone.
The DOJ says the alleged conduct happened while she was serving in an official role with the Southern District of Florida. Prosecutors claim she changed file names and transmitted government records to private email accounts in an attempt to avoid detection. The indictment also says one of the records was a DOJ report related to a criminal case that had been ordered sealed and was not supposed to be shared outside the department.
The Justice Department alleged that Lineberger knew the transmission of the report violated a court order and could interfere with the administration of the underlying case. She appeared in federal court for arraignment in West Palm Beach before Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge William Matthewman.
The case is being investigated by the FBI and the DOJ Office of the Inspector General. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christie S. Utt from the Northern District of Florida, who was assigned as a special prosecutor to avoid any conflict issues.
The indictment comes after Judge Aileen Cannon previously blocked the release of Jack Smith’s report on the classified documents case against President Trump. Cannon also took issue with the special counsel’s office preparing the report after the case had already been dismissed. In her ruling, she wrote, “Special Counsel Smith and his team went ahead for months, undeterred, preparing [the classified documents report] using discovery collected in connection with this proceeding and expending government funds in the process,” Judge Cannon wrote in a 15-page ruling.
She also said, “To say this chronology represents, at a minimum, a concerning breach of the spirit of the Dismissal Order is an understatement, if not an outright violation of it.”
And she added, “While it is true that former special counsels have released final reports at the conclusion of their work, it appears they have done so either after electing not to bring charges at all or after adjudications of guilt by plea or trial. The Court strains to find a situation in which a former special counsel has released a report after initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt,” Cannon wrote.
For now, the focus is on Lineberger and the way the report was allegedly handled. The charges are serious, and the government says the record trail was deliberately hidden. The case will now move forward in federal court.