Ryan Lochte's Lawyer: Trial on Rio Olympics Incident Is 'Absurd and Disgusting'

The 2016 Summer Olympics are long over, but United States swimmer Ryan Lochte is still dealing with the fallout from his bizarre gas station incident in Rio.

Fox News reported on Friday that Lochte could be prosecuted in Brazil for filing a false police report. In an interview with TMZ, the swimmer's lawyer, Jeff Ostrow, called the whole situation "absurd and disgusting" and said that his client "would never be treated this way in this country."

Lochte and three swimmers found themselves in the spotlight during the 2016 Summer Games—but not for what they did in the pool. Lochte initially claimed that he and his teammates were robbed at gunpoint by armed thieves who posed as police officers:

However, surveillance footage from the gas station told a different story. The swimmers, which included an intoxicated Lochte, were alleged to have vandalized a sign, and they admitted to urinating in an alley.

Lochte later apologized for "overexaggerating" the story:

A Rio 2016 spokesman accepted Lochte's apology, via Anton Troianovski of the Wall Street Journal: "It's clear that the Brazilian population felt humiliated."

In September 2016, Lochte was suspended from swimming for 10 months following the incident.

Despite winning a gold medal, his time at the Rio Olympics will always be defined by the false story. It had such a big impact on his life that Lochte told ESPN's Allison Glock last year that he contemplated suicide following the gas station incident: "I was about to hang up my entire life."

Lochte was cleared of criminal charges last summer. However, a Brazilian appellate court ruled in October 2017 that a criminal case can proceed.