A former federal prosecutor is in hot water after allegedly emailing herself a restricted volume of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump. Carmen Lineberger, 62, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in a Florida federal court to four charges involving the theft and concealment of government records. She was allowed to leave without paying bail, according to court documents.
Lineberger used to be the boss at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Fort Pierce, Florida. According to the indictment, she received the restricted report via email last year and then forwarded it, along with other internal Department of Justice messages, to her personal Hotmail and Gmail accounts.
The documents she allegedly took are a big deal. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has strictly banned the public from seeing this specific part of Jack Smith’s report. It deals with the sensitive investigation into classified documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
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To hide what she was doing, the indictment says Lineberger renamed the government files to “Chocolate_Cake_Recipe.pdf” and “Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf” before sending them to her personal email.
Right now, nobody knows exactly why she did it. The charges and the official Justice Department press release do not explain her motives, nor do they detail what else was inside the other internal emails she copied. Lineberger’s lawyer, Tama Kudman, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lineberger faces one felony count of obstruction of justice, one felony count of concealing government records, and two misdemeanor counts of stealing government property worth under $1,000.
While the absolute maximum penalty for these charges adds up to 25 years in prison, federal defendants usually get much less time under standard sentencing rules. Out-of-town prosecutors from the Northern District of Florida are running the case to avoid a conflict of interest, since Lineberger knows so many people in the Southern Florida legal system.
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