Main: Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith testifies before the House Judiciary Committee at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein). Left inset: Carmen Mercedes Lineberger (U.S. Attorney”s Office for the Southern District of Florida). Right inset: Judge Aileen Cannon (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida).
The U.S. Department of Justice inadvertently released copies of the second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith‘s final report on his criminal investigations into President Donald Trump.
In a joint notice of inadvertent discovery disclosure filed Thursday, federal prosecutors and defense attorneys alerted U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that the mistake “implicates the Order” she issued in January 2025 initially blocking the DOJ from releasing the report.
Cannon’s initial order, however, was subject to the conclusion of pending appellate proceedings. Simultaneously, the court invited a select number of interested parties for their arguments on the final disposition of the report. In February, Cannon affirmed her original order barring release — stopping short of having the report destroyed.
The joint notice was filed on the docket for the case arising from Smith’s criminal case against the 45th and 47th president, but, other than implicating Cannon’s order, has more to do with “a separate criminal prosecution” in which a now-former federal prosecutor allegedly emailed herself copies of the second volume.
In the case, Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, 62, who served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida, allegedly “altered the electronic file names of government records” during “separate instances in late 2025” to email the files to her personal accounts.
Specifically, the DOJ alleges she used file names like “chocolate cake recipe” and “bundt cake recipe” in an attempt to conceal “the true identity of an electronic copy of the Volume II Report.”
Earlier this month, the DOJ alerted Cannon that Lineberger had likely violated her order, as Law&Crime previously reported.
Now, the government is letting the judge know its own attorneys likely violated the order as well — by releasing the files to Lineberger’s defense team in the normal course of discovery. The oversight was brought to the prosecution’s attention by the defense.
The government provided the discovery in question to the defense on June 3 via several flash drives, according to the filing.
“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 notice explains. “Upon review, the Government confirmed the documents in question were copies of the Volume II Report that were embedded within electronic messages required to be produced in discovery.”
The defense, while apparently recognizing the second volume of the report on sight, did not look in detail at the files, the notice says.
“Upon confirmation by the Government, defense counsel 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,” the Thursday joint filing goes on.
Prosecutors lauded Lineberger’s defense team.
“The Government acknowledges the professionalism and candor of defense counsel in remedying this inadvertent inclusion in discovery materials furnished by the Government,” the notice continues.
And although the parties came together to alert Cannon to the breach, that does not mean Lineberger’s defense does not want to take a look at the second volume of the report. The joint notice says there has already been motions practice on the issue — and expects more to come.
“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,” the filing goes on. “On May 29, 2026, the Government filed its Unopposed Motion for Protective Order to preemptively limit the further dissemination by defense counsel of other sensitive materials and information disclosed and furnished in fulfillment of the Government’s discovery obligations.”
