Prosecution of ‘Bundt Cake Recipe’ Leaker Could Increase Chances That Jack Smith’s Secret Report Will Be Released

The indictment of a former Department of Justice official for downloading a copy of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago report, saving it under the name “Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf,” and then emailing it to her personal email highlights the contested nature of that secret dossier. Its final fate will be decided in appellate court, which could take the leak as a spur to action. The erstwhile official, Carmen Lineberger, faces four criminal charges that could put her in prison for decades. She has pleaded “not guilty,” and the indictment does not allege that she shared the information with anyone — or speculate on a motive. Still, the government maintains that even altering the file name — Ms. Lineberger retitled the sealed documents “Bundt Cake Recipe” and “Chocolate Cake Recipe” — amounts to a serious alteration of government documents. Ms. Lineberger was the managing assistant United States attorney at Fort Pierce, Florida, when she received a copy of the report by email last year. That is the same jurisdiction in which Mr. Smith brought his prosecution of Mr. Trump.Mr. Smith’s choice to bring his criminal documents case against Mr. Trump and two others — the valet Waltine Nauta and the property manager Carlos De Oliveira — in the Sunshine State led to the assignment of Judge Aileen Canon to preside over the prosecution. She proved to be a code that Mr. Smith could not crack. Judge Cannon eventually disqualified Mr. Smith as unlawfully appointed and dismissed the charges in the case. Judge Cannon also granted the request of Mr. Trump and his DOJ to “permanently block” the publication of Mr. Smith’s final report on the Mar–a-Lago prosecution, a document that federal regulations mandate that every special counsel produce. Discretion whether to public the report, though, is assigned in the first instance to the attorney general, who possesses the discretion to determine if release “would be in the public interest.”Attorney General Merrick Garland released Mr. Smith’s report post haste. In that document the prosecutor argued that he could have convicted Mr. Trump “but for” the results of the 2024 election, which returned him to the White House and decisively ended the special counsel’s prosecutions. Mr. Garland recommended releasing the Mar-a-Lago record only to select members of Congress, and swearing them to secrecy.Those precautions were not enough for Judge Cannon, who ruled that the report’s release would damage the due process rights of all three defendants. She reasoned that there has never been a case where a report was released after charges were brought but when a trial was never convened. She also accused Mr. Smith of a “brazen stratagem” — typing up his report even after he had been disqualified from the case. Judge Cannon wrote that releasing the report would “contravene basic notions of fairness and justice” and amount to a “manifest injustice.” She also failed to “find a situation in which a former special counsel has released a report after initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt.” Judge Cannon, though, did not grant Mr. Trump’s request that the report suffer “constitutional expungement” — meaning destruction.That leaves open the possibility that the report could eventually see the light of day. The groups pushing for that outcome — the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia and American Oversight — have appealed Judge Cannon’s decision to the 11th United States Appeals Circuit. At an earlier stage of the litigation the 11th Circuit declined to issue a writ of mandamus to force Judge Cannon to release the report. The standard for such writs — reckoned “extraordinary” — is high.The 11th Circuit has not hesitated to overrule Judge Cannon before. The appellate court rejected her imposition of a special master to oversee the collection of evidence from Mar-a-Lago, accusing her of “a radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations.” Mr. Smith appealed his disqualification to the 11th Circuit, but that petition was withdrawn after Mr. Trump regained the White House.Not immediately clear is how the DOJ’s prosecution of Ms. Lineberger might affect the 11th Circuit’s consideration of the report’s fate. The indictment, though, suggests that the report is far from destroyed, and is in circulation within the DOJ. The appellate tribunal could reckon that greenlighting its release is better than having it unlawfully leak.

Prosecution of ‘Bundt Cake Recipe’ Leaker Could Increase Chances That Jack Smith’s Secret Report Will Be Released

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