Former DOJ Attorney Who Helped Investigate Trump Charged With Stealing Confidential Documents: Patel

A former managing assistant U.S. attorney who previously worked on special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into President Donald Trump has been charged with stealing confidential documents related to investigations, FBI Director Kash Patel announced on May 20.

“This afternoon, a former managing assistant U.S. Attorney who supported Jack Smith’s politicized investigation of President Trump has been charged with stealing the confidential investigation documents,” Patel wrote in a post on X.

He identified the individual as Carmen Lineberger, saying that she had “allegedly emailed the confidential material to her own personal email, disguising them as dessert recipes to conceal them from record searches.”

Lineberger has been charged with four offenses, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release on May 20.

They include two counts of theft of government money or property with a value of less than $1,000. Each of these counts carries up to a one-year sentence in federal prison if Lineberger is convicted.

Another count is related to concealment, removal, or mutilation of public records. The count carries up to a three-year prison sentence if she’s convicted.

She’s also been charged with destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations, which carries the steepest penalty: up to 20 years in federal prison.

“This FBI will not hesitate to bring to account those who violated the trust of the American public in an investigation that should’ve never been brought to begin with,” Patel wrote on X.

According to the DOJ, Lineberger was serving as a managing assistant U.S. attorney of the Fort Pierce, Florida, branch of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida when the offense allegedly took place.

Per the indictment, in late 2025, Lineberger allegedly altered the file names of government records that she had received in the course of her official duties.

The altered files included “a document compiled by the defendant” consisting of portions of internal DOJ communications alongside an internal memo, as well as “a DOJ report related to a criminal prosecution in the [Southern District of Florida] that had been court-ordered to remain under seal and prohibited from distribution or disclosure” aside from DOJ officials.

Lineberger allegedly renamed these files with “misleading file names” such as “chocolate cake recipe” and “bundt cake recipe” before emailing them from her work email to a personal account.

The intention of the file name changes, the DOJ wrote, was “to conceal her unauthorized electronic transmission of those records to personal email accounts belonging to her without being detected,” even though she allegedly knew that the documents were specifically barred from outside distribution.

Lineberger appeared in court on May 20 for an arraignment on the four counts in the indictment before a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida.