Federal prosecutors accidentally handed over copies of a highly sensitive document to a defense team in a completely separate criminal case, according to a joint court filing submitted on Thursday.
The mistake came to light in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in the case involving Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. Both men were originally co-defendants alongside former President Donald Trump in the high-profile federal classified documents case.
Nauta, Trump’s personal aide and former White House valet, and De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago, had faced charges of obstruction and making false statements for allegedly conspiring to hide sensitive government files and delete security footage.
However, the Department of Justice officially dropped the criminal appeals and dismissed the cases against both men in early 2025, ending their prosecution.
Despite the conclusion of those high-profile proceedings, their case docket remains active for related matters. The newly filed document reveals that a restricted file known as the “Volume II Report” was mistakenly included in a bundle of evidence meant for a completely separate prosecution involving a defendant named Carmen Mercedes Lineberger.
According to the filing, the slip-up occurred on June 3, 2026, when the government turned over electronic files on flash drives to Lineberger’s defense team to meet its legal discovery obligations. Less than a week later, on June 9, the defense lawyers noticed three unexpected documents buried inside electronic messages they were reviewing. They immediately contacted the government to ask if those files were actually supposed to be there.
Federal officials quickly reviewed the situation and realized the files were indeed copies of the protected Volume II Report.
Once the error was confirmed, the defense team stopped looking at the files and took immediate steps to fix the situation. The filing notes that the attorneys “voluntarily ceased review of the discovery material, affirmed they had not examined the documents in question, deleted all discovery materials already downloaded to their server, and cooperated with the Government’s efforts to recover the flash drives that same day.”
In the court document, federal prosecutors openly praised the defense attorneys for handling the accident responsibly, stating that “The Government acknowledges the professionalism and candor of defense counsel in remedying this inadvertent inclusion in discovery materials furnished by the Government.”
While the government had already tried to limit the spread of sensitive information in Lineberger’s case by asking for a protective order on May 29, whether the defense will eventually get legal access to the report remains an open question. The joint notice stated that “Access to the Report as part of criminal discovery in the separate matter remains a contested issue that may be addressed at a future date.”
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