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Georgian-American businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze says a federal appeals court is poised to give him the relief he has been seeking for years since the Mueller report identified him in the infamous ‘golden showers’ footnote about Donald Trump.
Rtskhiladze sued former special counsel Robert Mueller and the Justice Department after he was quoted informing former Trump fixer Michael Cohen that he had ‘stopped flow of tapes from Russia.’
Its inclusion proved explosive in light of rumors included in the Steele dossier about alleged salacious conduct by Trump in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel – rumors that were never substantiated. Rtskhiladze continues to argue he was defamed by the footnote, which altered his texts to Cohen in the buildup to the 2016 campaign.
‘The Mueller report has published a wrong version of what I told them during my grand jury testimony,’ Rtskhiladze told DailyMail.com from Kazakhstan after his lawyer appeared before a D.C. Court of Appeals panel.
Georgian-American businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze is suing Robert Mueller and the Justice Department over a footnote that mentioned his texts with former Trump fixer Michael Cohen
A lower court judge had ruled that the businessman born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia – he was inaccurately identified as Russian in the report – lacked standing to sue.
His lawyer Jerome Madden told a three-judge panel Friday that was the wrong decision. ‘This is a case where the Department of Justice itself put into the public forum in a highly media feeding frenzy part of the transcript (of his client’s grand jury interview with prosecutors). And when it did that, it misquoted the transcript and it left out material parts,’ he said in court.
The attorney continued to rail against Footnote 112. ‘This footnote destroyed my client’s livelihood. All he wants to do is to be able to go to the public forum and say: Look, this is what I actually said. That’s all.
‘We knew nothing about tapes,’ said Rtskhiladze, who is in Kazakhstan for a meeting among film producers, the Georgian culture minister in an effort to bring more Hollywood movie shoots to Georgia.
Recalling how the episode began, he said he was at his home in Connecticut when he got a call from a friend in Moscow who phoned wanting to pass on some gossip because he knew he was in business with the Trump Organization.
‘I heard somebody bragging about some tapes of Trump from Russia. And I told Michael: beware there are some rumors.’
‘Of course I had no idea of the golden shower … Nobody was talking about any shower,’ he said.
Rtskhiladze wants access to the original grand jury transcript. Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled to keep the transcripts under seal. His lawyer said we wants the ability to publicize it.
In the passage at hand, Rtskhiladze texted Cohen in 2016, ‘Stopped flow of some tapes from Russia.’
But the Mueller report left out a word when it included the details, saying Rtskhiladze had said ‘Stopped flow of tapes from Russia,’ a small but significant difference that his complaint says suggests he knew about the content. Rtskhiladze has said repeatedly he believed it was only ‘bragging.’
He previously told DailyMail.com the information was included to damage Trump and ‘kill me’ as a scapegoat.
The lower court U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, held that Rtskhiladze had failed to show intentional malfeasance, and that the ‘obvious explanation is a mere drafting error,’ Bloomberg Law reported.
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Rtskhiladze isn’t the only one fixating on the Mueller report years after its release in April 2019.
The messages, obtained by DailyMail.com, show Rtskhiladze told Cohen: ‘Stopped flow of some tapes’
When Rtskhiladze mentioned it was ‘not a big deal’ but said there are ‘lots of stupid people,’ Cohen responded: ‘You have no idea’
The Mueller report referenced the ‘unverified allegation that the Russians had compromising tapes’ of Trump when he was in Russia for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant
Special Counsel Robert Mueller included a footnote about the texts and said it may relate to part of the golden showers dossier
The Mueller Report mentioned the Steele Dossier’s ‘unverified allegation that the Russians had compromising tapes of the President involving conduct when he was a private citizen during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe Pageant.’ It was a reference to unsubstantiated allegations regarding the Carlton Hotel, formerly the Ritz-Carlton Moscow
Trump himself continues to bring it up, along with the golden showers episode, as he rails against the ‘witch hunt’ while facing four criminal trials.
He did so again in Fort Dodge Iowa last month.
‘It started with Russia, Russia, Russia, remember that?’ Trump told a crowd.
‘He was with four hookers. You think that was good that night to go up and tell my wife, ‘It’s not true, darling, I love you very much. It’s not true!’ Actually, that one she didn’t believe, ’cause she said, ‘He’s a germaphobe; he’s not into that, you know?’ He’s not into golden showers, as they say they called it, he’s not.’
‘I don’t like that idea. No, I thought that would be a big problem. I was going to have a rough night. But that one, she was very good on,’ he said of former first lady Melania Trump.
Even if the three-judge panel rules against him, Rtskhiladze could try to get an en banc review of the entire circuit.
‘We are going to go all the way to wherever we have to go. If I have to go to the Supreme Court … and go on a hunger strike,’ he said he would do so to clear his name.
‘It should never happen,’ he said.
