A Georgian American businessman is suing Robert Mueller for defamation over his inclusion in the former special counsel’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Giorgi Rtskhiladze, who emigrated from Georgia to the United States in 1991 just before the fall of the Soviet Union, filed his 26-page lawsuit against Mueller and the Justice Department, claiming that “apparent pressure on the special prosecutors to find Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — which they concluded did not occur — appears to have led them nevertheless to create a counterfactual and wildly speculative footnote that leads the reader to believe there was collusion — but at plaintiff’s expense.”
Rtskhiladze’s legal team pointed to Footnote 112 of Volume II of Mueller’s report, which selectively quoted some October 2016 texts between the Georgian American and President Trump’s now-former personal lawyer Michael Cohen. In the footnote, Mueller’s team said Rtskhiladze texted Cohen: “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else.”
Rtskhiladze’s lawyers said that Footnote 112 “insinuates that the referenced tapes were the shocking tapes mentioned in the so-called Steele Dossier” and “speciously suggests that plaintiff knew the purported tapes were fake but failed to tell Mr. Cohen.” He called these alleged insinuations “false, reckless, and misleading.” Rtskhiladze took particular offense to be referred to as a “Russian businessman” by Mueller.
British ex-spy Christopher Steele, whose salacious and flawed dossier was used by the FBI to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page, alleged that Russia possessed tapes of Trump with prostitutes at the Ritz Carlton Moscow from the future president’s time there at the Miss Universe pageant in 2013.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in December that criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the bureau’s use of the dossier. Recently declassified footnotes showed the FBI was aware that Steele’s dossier might have been compromised by Russian disinformation.
“The Mueller Report’s freshly minted — but counterfeit — public portrait of plaintiff as a ‘Russian businessman’ involved in furtive dealings with a Russian oligarch was broadcast worldwide and has stigmatized plaintiff,” Rtskhiladze lawyers told the court. “This stigmatization has imposed tangible and dramatic negative changes to his status as an American businessman dedicated to fostering positive relations between his adopted country, the United States, and his native country, Georgia — something vital to both countries in deterring Russian aggression. The great irony is that plaintiff has spent his adult life fostering a relationship that the Putin regime tirelessly seeks to subvert.”
Steele’s first dossier memo from June 2016 claimed that a “former senior Russian intelligence official” said Russian intelligence was able to “blackmail” Trump and that his conduct in Moscow “has included perverted sexual acts” monitored by the Russians.
No evidence has ever emerged publicly to support these claims. Horowitz’s report stated Steele’s primary sub-source told investigators that the “pee tape” claims about Trump were nothing but “rumor and speculation” and disputed Steele’s claim that the story was “confirmed” by anyone.
Still, FBI Director James Comey told Trump about them at Trump Tower in January 2017.
Mueller wrote that “Cohen had never traveled to Prague” and referred to the existence of compromising tapes of Trump as an “unverified allegation.”
Intelligence reports in 2017 “assessed” that Steele’s claim about Cohen in Prague “was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.” Another intelligence report that year contained evidence that Steele’s allegations about Trump and prostitutes “were false” and the product of Russian intelligence services “infiltrating a source into the network” of a redacted person who “compiled a dossier of information on Trump’s activities.”
Rtskhiladze told the Daily Caller in May that the Senate Intelligence Committee had reached out to him in February regarding his interactions with the person who had told him the “tapes” rumor, whom Rtskhiladze claims he identified to the committee as Sergey Khokhlov, a friend and former business partner who overheard someone at a Moscow restaurant talking about a Trump tape. Rtskhiladze also said he wrote to Attorney General William Barr in April asking for an apology for having been roped into the Mueller inquiry.
In 2012, the Trump Organization announced plans to build a new tower in Georgia with the Silk Road Group, where Rtskhiladze works as a partner at the company’s U.S. affiliate. He had helped broker a deal that resulted in a $1 million licensing fee, although Trump pulled out of the deal in January 2017 prior to being sworn in as president.
