The Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago report, the sealed second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his criminal investigations into President Donald Trump, was inadvertently handed to defence lawyers acting for a former federal prosecutor charged with stealing it, the government has confirmed.
Federal prosecutors and defence attorneys filed a joint notice of inadvertent discovery disclosure on Thursday, alerting U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that copies of Volume II had been embedded within electronic materials produced to the defence team of Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, 62, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
How the Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago Report Ended Up in Discovery
The government provided discovery to Lineberger’s defence on 3 June 2026 via several flash drives. Six days later, defence counsel identified three documents embedded within the materials and contacted prosecutors to query whether the documents had been intentionally produced.
‘On June 9, 2026, defense counsel promptly notified the Government that, upon reviewing the electronic discovery that same day, defense counsel identified three documents embedded within the materials and contacted the Government to determine if those documents were intended to be produced in discovery,’ the joint notice states.
Upon review, prosecutors confirmed the documents were copies of Volume II of the report. The defence team then voluntarily stopped reviewing the materials, affirmed it had not examined the documents in question, deleted all discovery files already downloaded to its server, and co-operated with the government’s efforts to recover the flash drives on the same day. Prosecutors praised the response, describing it as demonstrating ‘professionalism and candor.’
Lineberger, a resident of Port St. Lucie, Florida, faces a four-count indictment returned by a grand jury in the Northern District of Florida. The charges include two counts of theft of government property and additional counts relating to the concealment and falsification of records. According to CNBC, the indictment alleges she emailed the sealed portion of Smith’s report from her DOJ account to her personal Gmail account on 1 December 2025. The Department of Justice alleges she disguised the electronic file names using labels including ‘chocolate cake recipe’ and ‘bundt cake recipe’ to conceal the true identity of the files. TC Palm reports that she faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Lineberger’s initial appearance and bond hearing took place on 20 May 2026 before Chief Magistrate Judge William Matthewman, court records show.
Cannon’s Order and the Contested Status of Volume II
The inadvertent disclosure matters because Judge Cannon issued an order in January 2025 initially blocking the Department of Justice from releasing Volume II of Smith’s report. In February 2026, Cannon affirmed that original order barring release, stopping short of directing the report’s destruction. She cited her July 2024 ruling that Smith had not been lawfully appointed as special counsel (the ruling that had led her to dismiss the criminal case against Trump) as the basis for withholding the report from public view, CNBC reported.
That order remains subject to appellate proceedings. The Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on behalf of First Amendment scholars, arguing that Cannon violated settled law by declaring Volume II is not a judicial record subject to the common-law right of access.
The joint notice filed Thursday was docketed in the case arising from Smith’s original criminal proceedings against Trump, because the inadvertent disclosure implicates Cannon’s order in that matter. The substantive issue, however, concerns ‘a separate criminal prosecution’ of Lineberger.
Access to Volume II as criminal discovery in Lineberger’s case remains live. On 29 May 2026 the government filed an unopposed motion for a protective order to limit further dissemination by defence counsel of sensitive materials produced in discovery. The joint notice indicates that motions practice on access to the report in the Lineberger proceedings is ongoing and is expected to continue.
Whether Lineberger’s team ultimately obtains court-ordered access to the Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago report through the normal discovery process will turn on how Cannon resolves that contested issue, subject to any onward appeal.
