File this story in the “things you can’t make up” group of Trump-era mistakes.
The Justice Department, now led by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — who was Donald Trump’s personal defense lawyer in the very case this report is about — accidentally sent copies of Jack Smith’s sealed Volume II report to defense lawyers in a different criminal case.
Volume II is the report Trump has done everything possible to keep hidden.
It has Jack Smith’s evidence that Trump mishandled classified documents after he left the White House.Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee who dismissed the original case and sealed the report in February — has clearly said the DOJ can’t share it with anyone outside the department.
Oops.
Here’s what happened: Carmen Lineberger, a former federal prosecutor who was charged with emailing herself a copy of Volume II disguised as a cake recipe, is waiting for her trial.
On June 3rd, the DOJ sent her defense lawyers flash drives with files as part of routine discovery.Six days later, her lawyers found that Volume II was in the files.
To their credit, Lineberger’s lawyers stopped reviewing the materials right away, confirmed they hadn’t looked at the report, deleted everything they downloaded, and worked fully with the government to recover the flash drives.
The DOJ praised their “professionalism and candor.”
But let’s step back and see how crazy this situation really is.
The DOJ is being run by Trump’s former personal defense lawyer.
At the same time, it’s prosecuting a woman for stealing a report that points to Trump, and it accidentally sent that same report to her defense team.Judge Cannon — the same judge who tossed out the original case, sealed the report, and has always been in Trump’s corner — is in charge of everything.
Senate Democrats have already warned about Blanche running the department that controls access to a report about his former client.
These conflict-of-interest concerns have just become much more real.
Cannon sealed the report, saying Trump “still enjoys the presumption of innocence.” Meanwhile, the American people are treated as if they don’t deserve to know what their president did with classified materials that belong to the government, not Trump!
If, at some point, the DOJ ever tells the public what it accidentally shared with these defense lawyers, maybe that “presumption of innocence” won’t seem as strong anymore.
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