Video above: See the week\u2019s top headlines in Tampa Bay<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A former federal prosecutor in Florida sent to her personal email account a special counsel report from the investigation into President Donald Trump\u2019s\u00a0hoarding of classified documents<\/a>\u00a0despite a judge\u2019s order that it remain sealed, according to an indictment made public on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Carmen Lineberger, who worked in the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Southern District of Florida and managed its Fort Pierce branch, faces charges including theft of government property and concealment of government records. She pleaded not guilty during a court appearance in West Palm Beach. Her attorney did not immediately return messages seeking comment.<\/p>\n Prosecutors allege that while serving as a Justice Department prosecutor last December, Lineberger sent a copy of the report that\u00a0special counsel Jack Smith<\/a>\u00a0and his team had prepared, recapping their investigation into Trump\u2019s retention of top-secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, to her personal email account.<\/p>\n The indictment alleges that Lineberger sought to conceal her actions by altering the original file name of the report to \u201cBundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf\u201d before saving the re-titled file on her government computer and emailing it to her personal email account.<\/p>\n Several months earlier, according to the indictment, Lineberger created on her computer a document consisting of portions of internal Justice Department messages, along with portions of an internal memorandum with header and footer markings that indicated it was for official use only. She sent the material to her personal email address via an attached file titled \u201cchocolate_cake_recipe.pdf,\u201d prosecutors say.<\/p>\n The indictment does not explain why Lineberger may have wanted to send the report, which prosecutors say she had access to in her professional capacity as a prosecutor, to her own email account.<\/p>\n The volume detailing Smith\u2019s findings in a criminal investigation once seen as posing significant legal peril to Trump has never been seen by the public. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon sided with Trump\u2019s lawyers, who argued that releasing the report would be unfairly prejudicial after\u00a0Smith abandoned the case following<\/a>\u00a0Trump\u2019s 2024 election victory.<\/p>\n Lineberger worked in the same judicial district where Smith\u2019s case against Trump was filed. That case accused Trump of illegally retaining at the Mar-a-Lago property dozens of classified records from his first term and obstructing government efforts to get them back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Video above: See the week\u2019s top headlines in Tampa Bay WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A former federal prosecutor in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-278533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}