Exclusive | DOJ quietly issues first-ever correction to Mueller Report over infamous golden showers footnote
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) inco...