Special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report on Russian election meddling reveals new information about the rumored “pee tape” allegedly featuring President Donald Trump.
According to the report released Thursday, there were tapes, though it’s unclear whether they featured Trump at all, much less the future president watching “prostitutes” perform golden showers in a hotel room during his 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, as has been rumored.
While Mueller’s report doesn’t say definitively whether the pee tape is real, it reveals in a footnote that there was a Russian businessman working with then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen to hold the “flow.”
According to the report (emphasis ours):
On October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen received a text from Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze that said, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know...” Rtskhiladze said “tapes” referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia. Cohen said he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving the texts from Rtskhiladze. Rtskhiladze said he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen.
The scandal made a splash after a dossier on Trump and his associates, compiled by British spy Christopher Steele, went public in 2016. Since then, there’s been no proof of a pee tape, though American lawmakers and even Russian President Vladimir Putin have hinted that there might be similar compromising information out there.
Trump, meanwhile, has long denied the allegations set forth in the Steele dossier. He was, however, pretty pissed about them, according to Mueller’s report:
The President-Elect expressed concern to intelligence community leaders about the fact that the information had leaked and asked whether they could make public statements refuting the allegations in the Steele reports.