The Justice Department has quietly issued a stunning correction to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on President Trump and Russia after a years-long legal battle — admitting the infamous “golden showers” footnote contains a critical error.
The footnote buried in the 2019 Mueller report dangled a link between Georgian-American businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze to alleged “tapes” of Donald Trump in Moscow — fueling breathless cable TV chatter that the Russians might hold “kompromat” leverage over President Trump.
It was linked to one of the most explosive allegations to emerge from the “Steele dossier” compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele during the run-up to the 2016 elections. But it contained a significant inaccuracy that Rtskhiladze says cost him a heavy price.
“This was a huge lie. And now we know, after the correction came, that I was not Russian. They knew I was Georgian-American. They knew this one Day One,” Rtskhiladze fumed to The Post.
The inclusion of the false identifying information in the report poured more fuel onto salacious and unsubstantiated allegations about Trump’s alleged conduct with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room during the 2013 Miss Universe pageant — elevating Rtskhiladze’s communications with former Trump fixer Michael Cohen as a potential smoking gun.
The correction is the only official change to the 448-page report that was the center of a political storm during President Trump’s first term, and comes as Trump continues to settle scores from that era. DOJ gave no official notice of the correction, and it now sits at the bottom of the agency’s archival page on former Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Rtskhiladze sued Mueller and the US government for defamation in 2020. DOJ issued its dry correction to footnote 112 in December, The Post has learned.
DOJ “notes that the Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election (2019) incorrectly identified” Rtskhiladze as a “Russian businessman … when in fact he is Georgian-American,” it states, in its entirety.
The correction mentions nothing else about its unsubstantiated allegations about Trump. But the correction punctures a key part of the narrative, which Rtskhiladze says destroyed his reputation by portraying him as an agent for Moscow and ultimately its president, Vladimir Putin.
He was born in a former Soviet republic that is experiencing severe strains with Moscow. He has become a US citizen, and says his texts with Cohen were mere banter and passing along rumors he had heard in Moscow.
In one fateful text included in the footnote, Rtskhiladze wrote Cohen that he “Stopped flow of some tapes from Russia.” The Mueller report omitted the word “some,” which Rtskhiladze also says distorted the tone of his message.
The businessman, who once partnered with Trump on a tower project in the Republican of Georgia, brought his defamation case all the way to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. He didn’t win any money, but is in the process of trying to get the feds to pay for legal fees in the thousands of dollars. The court did rule he had standing to bring his claim, reversing a lower court ruling.
“Everybody knew this was a lie. Mueller knew it was a lie. They knew it was a lie because I spent 25, 30 hours with them (being interviewed by his prosecutors). And they were fishing the whole time, trying to find angles in every way possible,” he said.
“They were offering me all kinds of different things — I could not discuss until this case was done and closed.”
What they wanted, Rtskhiladze claims, was dirt on Trump.
“They were implying in every way possible if I ever detected Trump being interested in meeting Mr. Putin, if I was ever asked by Mr. Trump to set up a meeting with Mr. Putin. And when we were in Georgia, did Trump ever acquire any, you know, women – [or engage in] bad behavior. All those questions were coming to me in a way [that] if you give us that, we’ll kind of take it easy on you. If not, you’re going to have seven prosecutors coming at you like dogs hunting your throat.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. Former Mueller assistant prosecutor Jeannie Rhee, a private lawyer who interviewed Rtskhiladze in 2018 as a top prosecutor on Mueller’s team, did not respond to a request for comment.
Cohen praised the DOJ’s correction.
“I’m glad he got his ounce of flesh from them in terms of having to have a correction put in,” said Cohen, who said he was “happy with the outcome but disappointed on how long it’s taken in order to get to this truth.” He recalled his 2019 House testimony “about the infamous pee-tape” and said there was no such thing. “They asked me how do you know? And I said because I tried to find it. And it doesn’t exist,” he said.
Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017 about meetings with Russian intermediaries, said he understood Rtskhiladze’s battle against the Justice Department.
“In terms of the power that a special counsel — these type of prosecutors — have, they could destroy your life if they want to, and they try to do that to many people,” said Papadapoulos, who got a pardon from Trump – and whose case helped trigger the Russia probe.
“My experience was basically being somebody caught between a rock and a very hard place, and that was the tool that the government wanted to utilize,” Papadapoulos said.
In addition to fighting in court to try to clear his name, Rtskhiladze worked behind the scenes to persuade key Trump administration figures, buttonholing AG Pam Bondi and Vice President JD Vance during events at the now-renamed Trump-Kennedy Center.
“This addresses a mischaracterization that distorted the 2016 election narrative and fueled the Russia hoax,” said Rskhiladze’s spokesperson Melanie Bonvicino, who said the footnote error caused “irreparable harm to him and his family.”
Rskhiladze ended his development deal with the Trump Organization after Trump won the 2016 election. The project in Batumi, Georgia, had been Trump’s first building project within Moscow’s historic sphere of influence.
“They have dismantled very good people, American citizens with enormous networks in that part of the world fighting Russian influence,” he said.
