A lawyer for the social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate urged a US judge on Thursday to release the brothers on bail from a Miami jail as they contest extradition to Britain, where they are wanted on rape charges. Howard Srebnick, a lawyer for the Tate brothers, told the Miami-based US magistrate judge Lauren Louis that they had regularly appeared in court in Romania, where they are on pre-trial release, which he said was evidence they were not a flight risk. Andrew Tate, 39, and Tristan Tate, 38, wore beige prison garb and sported beards to their hearing.
They were arrested in Miami on 18 July after Britain requested their extradition to face charges of rape, assault and facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation. The Tate brothers, who have dual US and British citizenship, have denied any wrongdoing. The arrests marked a new phase in the legal troubles for the former kickboxers, who have built a large online following promoting their views on masculinity and wealth.
Andrew Tate has previously described himself as a misogynist. The Tates recruited dozens of women to work for a webcam pornography business starting in 2014, and later ran online courses called “Hustler’s University”, prosecutors with the Miami US attorney’s office said in a 10 August court filing. The prosecutors said in court filings there was a strong presumption in favor of detention in international extradition cases.
They said the Tates could pose a danger to the community if released, citing British authorities’ allegations that they strangled victims during forcible rapes, and that they could try to flee. The prosecutors also pointed to allegations by authorities in Romania, where the brothers face human-trafficking charges, that they sought to influence witnesses’ statements while released on judicial supervision there. Romanian authorities say the Tates threatened to release private information about alleged victims and bribed an alleged victim, the US prosecutors said.
The brothers’ defense lawyers have said in court filings there was no need to keep them behind bars while the extradition process played out because their “extraordinary public visibility” would make it impractical for them to flee. They said the witnesses the Tates were alleged to have bribed were women who wanted to speak on their behalf, and said the Tates helped coordinate their travel to Bucharest and hired lawyers for them. The defense lawyers proposed that Louis release them on the conditions they post bond, surrender their passports and submit to location monitoring.
The legal process for determining whether the Tate brothers may be extradited could take months. Prosecutors in Britain have until 16 September to submit a full extradition request to the state department, US court records show. The impetus for the brothers’ arrests in Miami was new charges brought by the Crown Prosecution Service in Britain relating to alleged offenses involving four alleged victims between July 2010 and August 2017.
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