"Why does he want to see my client's tattoo? Is he gay? If he's gay I may have allowed him to see it," lawyer Rainier Madrid told reporters after his client attended the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing on the entry of P6.4B worth of illegal drugs in the country.
Madrid said he advised Duterte to decline showing his tattoo as the body mark was not related to the subject of the nearly 4-hour long congressional inquiry.
"My client refuses to be an "uto-uto" (gullible)... I will not allow my client to be humiliated under such a silly circumstance," Madrid said.
"We do not want to dignify Trillanes' accusations and fishing expedition. The issue discussed in the committee is not [the] existence of the tattoo," he added.
Madrid said he neither saw nor got a confirmation from the Davao vice mayor if the tattoo on his back was a "colored dragon" as Trillanes alleged.
"A tattoo is a very private matter. I won't ask my client to show it to me unless I'm gay and I want to see his body," he said.
Madrid said Trillanes was just spewing propaganda to get back at President Rodrigo Duterte for not choosing the former military man as his runningmate in the 2016 presidential elections.
"He's just going after the president's weakest link which is his son," he said.
During the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee's 7th hearing on the Customs mess, Trillanes alleged that the Davao vice mayor belongs to a "triad" that operates smuggling activities in Hong Kong and China.
The senator said proof of Duterte's triad membership was a "colored dragon tattoo" on his back that had serial numbers that would indicate which "triad faction" he belonged to.
But Duterte refused to show the body mark, invoking his right to privacy.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
