Obama, Biden and Trump Judges Deal Legal Blow to Robert Mueller

A federal appeals court panel, with judges appointed by the country’s most recent three presidents, has partially reversed a lower court decision and granted a Georgian American businessman standing in his case against former special counsel Robert Mueller.

Friday’s ruling comes from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The opinion was written by Judge Justin Reed Walker, a Donald Trump appointee, and joined by Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, and Judge Florence Pan, a President Joe Biden appointee. They decided that the businessman can proceed with his lawsuit’s claims that Mueller’s Russian election-inference report in 2019 hurt his reputation.

Giorgi Rtskhiladze is a Georgian-born businessman who had worked with the Trump Organization on a potential Trump Tower project in Moscow. He argues that the Department of Justice (DOJ) misquoted him in the Mueller report, a 448-page document about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that followed a probe by then-special counsel Mueller. Rtskhiladze was a witness who testified before the grand jury in Mueller’s investigation.

He is referenced in Mueller’s report several times, including in a specific footnote calling him “Russian,” which Rtskhiladze says is inaccurate. Georgia is a former Soviet state.

Rtskhiladze also says the report misquoted an October 2016 text message—a month before the presidential election—to Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen, saying, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia.” The original message said, “Stopped flow of some tapes from Russia,” Rtskhiladze said.

He argues that this misrepresentation damaged his reputation and business and that the omission “suggests familiarity” with the content of the tapes. The tapes, allegedly explicit recordings of Trump with prostitutes in Russia in 2013, surfaced during the release of the Christopher Steele dossier but have never been verified. Steele is a former British intelligence agent.

The appeals court found that despite corrections to a Senate report on the same matters, it “does not extinguish the harm from an earlier government report” and “could continue to harm Rtskhiladze.”

Walker wrote in the court’s ruling, “Congress neither speaks for DOJ, nor speaks infallibly. Either way, a court could redress the ongoing injury by ordering DOJ to correct the Mueller Report.”

When the appeal was filed, Rtskhiladze’s lawyer, Jerome Madden, said, “This footnote destroyed my client’s livelihood.”

Newsweek filed out an online contact request form with the Madden Law Group for comment on Friday.

The decision sends the case back to a lower court to consider Rtshiladze’s claims both before and after the Senate report’s release. The decision also upholds the lower court’s decision to deny Rtskhiladze’s request to obtain a transcript of his grand jury testimony, as well as a request for financial damages.

“Though Rtskhiladze has standing to sue for damages, he failed to state a claim for which relief can be granted,” the appeals court said.