Detained social media personality Andrew Tate plays an “Andrew Tate character” who says things for “entertainment” and is not intending to be taken seriously, his lawyer says.
Tina Glandian called her client a “free speech martyr” and said there is no evidence of the allegations over which he is being investigated in Romania.
A Romanian court has upheld a third 30-day detention for the former Big Brother contestant, who is being held on suspicion of organised crime and human trafficking.
Tate lost his appeal on Monday against a judge’s decision on February 21 to extend his arrest a third time for 30 days, according to a spokesman for Romania’s anti-organised crime agency DIICOT.
The former kickboxer, 36, a dual UK-US citizen known for his misogynistic views and who has 5.2 million Twitter followers, arrived at the Bucharest court of appeal handcuffed to his brother Tristan, who is being held in the same case.
Asked on Times Radio on Wednesday if her client plays an “Andrew Tate character”, Ms Glandian said: “Yes and it’s not even just in my view – there’s certainly interviews I’ve seen where Andrew himself has said: ‘You know I say a lot of things, it’s satire’.
“I’ve heard a lot of silly things, I’ve heard him talk about whether eggs are real or the fact that he’s existed for 5000 years because you know there’s a ninja warrior inside of him.
“There’s lots of things I think he says as entertainment. It’s his public persona and those things are not all intended to be taken seriously.”
On the allegations he faces in Romania, Ms Glandian added: “There is no evidence in the file of human trafficking.
“There’s no evidence of force or coercion, or forced transport, or forced labour, or any sort of deprivation of women’s liberty, which is at the heart of any sort of human trafficking charge.
“They have been investigated for a very long time and they have not been charged.”
Glandian said the Tate brothers have “public personas” through which they say things their audiences want to hear.
“That’s not evidence of crime, that’s not who they are as private people and that’s not what should be considered evidence in a court of law,” she added.
Asked about Andrew Tate’s comment that women bear responsibility for rape, Glandian insisted that a lot of what he has said has been “taken out of context”.
She said her client has talked about “promoting loving consensual relationships with women”.
The US lawyer, a partner at Geragos & Geragos, also said she was not trying to recast Tate as a feminist but that her client’s controversial comments are not evidence in a criminal investigation.
“We don’t prosecute rap artists because they say things about… criminal activity,” she added.
