A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida returned a four-count indictment against Carmen Lineberger, who previously served as the Managing Assistant United States Attorney (MAUSA) of the Fort Pierce branch of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida (SDFL).
The indictment alleges that in separate instances in late 2025, Lineberger altered electronic file names of government records she received in her official capacity. She then transmitted those records without authorization to her personal email accounts, including Hotmail and Gmail.
The altered records included a document she compiled consisting of portions of internal Department of Justice (DOJ) electronic messages and an internal DOJ memorandum, as well as a DOJ report related to a criminal prosecution in the SDFL that had been ordered by the court to remain under seal and prohibited from distribution or disclosure outside of the DOJ.
According to the indictment, Lineberger saved copies under misleading file names such as “Chocolate_cake_recipe.pdf” and “Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf” before emailing them from her DOJ account to her personal addresses. One transmission occurred around September 2025 for the internal memorandum document, and another on or about December 1, 2025, for the report.
Lineberger speaks at the 41st Annual Conference & Job Fair on August 26, 2024
Prosecutors allege that with respect to the DOJ report — identified across sources as Volume II or a sealed portion of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on the investigation into then-former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents — Lineberger acted knowing that the transmission violated a court order and could impair the proper administration of the underlying criminal prosecution.
The records in question stem from the special counsel investigation led by Jack Smith into Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. The SDFL case was filed in that district, and Lineberger’s office in Fort Pierce played a supporting role in aspects of the work, including prior to Smith’s appointment and events such as the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago.
Lineberger was not a member of Smith’s special counsel team itself but held a supervisory position in the local U.S. Attorney’s Office with access to related materials in her official capacity.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon had issued an order on January 21, 2025, that sealed the report. After Trump’s 2024 election victory, Smith abandoned the case, and the judge later blocked its public release, citing potential prejudice. The sealed material has not been made public.
Lineberger appeared in federal court in West Palm Beach on Wednesday before Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge William Matthewman. She entered a plea of not guilty and was released on her own recognizance. Her attorney has not publicly commented in detail on the charges as of this report.
If convicted, she faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment for the count of destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in a federal investigation; up to three years for concealment, removal, or mutilation of public records; and up to one year on each theft count.
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