Days before Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, Andrew Tate got some good news.
Mr. Tate and his brother, Tristan, swaggering influencers in the so-called manosphere, had been under criminal investigation in Romania since 2022, accused of coercing women into pornography. Andrew was also accused of rape and of having sex with and beating a 15-year-old. The brothers, American and British citizens, had been barred from leaving Romania while prosecutors built their case.
Now, in a Jan. 14 text message, Mr. Tate indicated that help was on the way.
“I had word from The Trump admin that theyre on top of things,” Mr. Tate wrote to someone close to him, in a message reviewed by The New York Times. “Ive been told ill be free soon but Trump needs to see me in Miami,” he added.
The next month, an extraordinary order came down from the highest levels of the Romanian government, a Times investigation found. The prosecutors were told to find a compromise with the Tates. Despite their misgivings, they lifted the travel restrictions, a move that Romania’s prime minister thought would appease the Trump administration.
“We’re massively back,” a grinning Mr. Tate announced in a video recorded for his followers on Feb. 27, as a private plane whisked the brothers to Florida.
Their arrival in the United States opened a rare rift among conservatives and raised suspicions over whether the White House had intervened. The Times found that support from Trump administration officials played a crucial role.
Interviews with dozens of people in Romania, the United States and Britain, as well as a review of hundreds of pages of court documents and private messages, offer the fullest account yet of how the Tates rose from a fringe corner of the internet to become a cause célèbre on the right. The brothers’ release from Romania was the culmination of a yearslong effort by Andrew to forge alliances with Mr. Trump’s advisers and family members.
The Tates have helped propel a brazenly chauvinistic movement around the world, even as they racked up allegations of human trafficking and physical violence in multiple countries. They deny criminal wrongdoing. But Andrew, 39, and Tristan, 37, have boasted about recruiting women to make lucrative sexual content, and have sold courses teaching young men how to follow in their footsteps.
As his notoriety grew, Andrew Tate shrewdly courted Tucker Carlson and other media stars of the right, who in turn tapped into the brothers’ loyal following to expand their own reach.
Andrew also nurtured relationships with Donald Trump Jr. and his younger brother Barron, who recognized the role that young male voters could play in their father’s return to power.
Barron, now 19, admired Andrew, and spoke with him over Zoom last year, according to Justin Waller, a mutual friend who was on the call. During the call, they discussed their shared belief that the Romanian criminal case was an effort to silence the Tates, he said.
After Mr. Trump’s re-election, some of the Tates’ supporters ascended into the new administration. One of them, the diplomatic envoy Richard Grenell, twice discussed their case with Romanian officials, The Times found.
Within days of the second conversation, the Romanian prosecutors received their marching orders and handed the Tates the freedom to travel — after long arguing that the brothers were a public danger and a flight risk. The prosecutors were outraged, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.
The brother’s liberation rattled many American diplomats, who feared a shadowy new era of foreign relations. And it prompted hostility from many traditional conservatives, from Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, to the commentator Megyn Kelly, who said, “This actually is toxic masculinity.” Some likened the Tates to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Their return also led to a new assault allegation, from a girlfriend who said Andrew beat and strangled her shortly after his arrival in the United States. Prosecutors declined to bring charges, but she has filed a lawsuit against him and has been granted a restraining order. He is suing her for defamation.
In a statement to The Times, the Romanian prosecutors’ office said that the country’s constitution requires them to operate independently and that their actions in the Tates’ case have been legal. Marcel Ciolacu, who was the prime minister when the Tates were released, did not respond to requests for comment.
An official with the White House said it has no knowledge of and is not involved in anything related to the Tates’ legal matters. The official did not respond to questions about Barron. Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to a request for comment.
The Tates’ lawyer said The Times’s findings about Andrew and Barron were “fake news.”
After more than two years of confinement, the brothers have used their newfound freedom to resume their jet-setting lifestyle and juice their brand. They have visited Kanye West, partied poolside with beautiful women and promoted their business to chanting fans.
“I’m in Dubai, I’m still rich, all I do is win,” Andrew said in a video posted in April that shows him driving off in a Bugatti.
But their legal problems haven’t gone away. The Romanian case is moving forward, and once it’s finished, the brothers will face charges of human trafficking and rape in Britain.
And in the United States, The Times found, anti-trafficking agents at the Department of Homeland Security have been investigating the Tates for years.
Riding Outrage to Money and Fame
Andrew Tate found modest fame as a professional kickboxer in the 2010s, but as he tells it, he didn’t start making real money until he and his brother went into pornography.
By 2015, the Tates had installed women in apartments and a hotel room in Britain, to perform live on webcams for paying customers. Andrew later described how the brothers romanced attractive women, coaxed them into the business and took most of the profits.
“It’s not just about picking up girls,” Mr. Tate said in an interview posted to YouTube. “It’s about converting them into really loving you enough to moving in with you and working for you and giving you all the money.”
Both brothers had run-ins with the British police. Tristan was arrested in 2014 after a woman reported he had assaulted her.
The next year, Andrew was arrested three times, the police said. One woman who had worked for him said in court documents that he strangled her during sex; another said he had raped, beaten and pulled a gun on her; a third woman said he had raped and strangled her while they were dating.
Authorities did not charge either brother. But Andrew said the scrutiny prompted him to leave Britain.
One day, he recalled on a podcast years later, he woke up and said, “I will not live under a government that will do this to me when I’ve done nothing wrong.” He and Tristan moved to Romania, a country they had gotten to know through the professional fighting circuit. There, Andrew said on another show, “you can get away with shit you can’t get away with in the West.”
With Romania as their new home base, the brothers ran their webcam business from there and in Britain.
When Andrew was cast for the British reality show “Big Brother” in 2016, few knew about his business or the assault allegations.
He was soon fired, however, after a tabloid obtained a video of him whipping a girlfriend with a belt. They both said it was consensual.
The scandal boosted his fame, especially on social media, where he became a fierce supporter of Mr. Trump. Donald Trump Jr. liked one of his supportive Twitter posts and they soon agreed to meet, Mr. Tate recalled on a podcast. He went to Trump Tower in 2017.
“We still inbox each other every couple of days,” Mr. Tate said on the podcast, in 2018.
By 2022, he and Tristan had gained millions of followers by preaching mental and physical discipline, entrepreneurship and the subjugation of women. They had expanded the porn business to TikTok, OnlyFans and other platforms, and were selling their courses to young men. One offering was called PHD, for “pimping hoes degree.” Over the previous eight years, they had earned at least 21 million pounds (nearly $28 million), according to records from a British court that found they had evaded taxes.
When Andrew was kicked off several social media platforms and decried by high school teachers, it only increased his notoriety. He became one of the most searched people on Google.
In December 2022, the brothers were arrested in Romania and, with court approval, jailed for three months. Prosecutors later charged them with forming an organized criminal group and trafficking seven women, and charged Andrew with rape.
The 360-page sealed indictment, obtained by The Times, said the Tates had tricked the women into believing they were in long-term relationships, then coerced them into pornographic work. The brothers had put them under surveillance, restricted their movements and docked their pay if they cried on camera or broke other rules, prosecutors said.
Text messages cited in the indictment show Andrew Tate and one woman discussing what would happen if she went to Romania.
Once she arrived, he raped her twice, on one occasion forcing her into group sex, the indictment said.
Andrew choked another woman so hard that blood vessels in her eye burst, prosecutors said.
In a text-message chat titled “PIMPS,” Tristan and two associates discussed how to punish a woman who said she would no longer work for them.
The woman was pushed down and dragged out of the house, she and witnesses told prosecutors.
Romania, long known as a hub for sex trafficking, has expanded prosecutions to include so-called Lover Boy cases based on romance, psychological coercion and threats. The indictment against the Tates acknowledged that two of the women cited as victims said they didn’t see themselves that way. Prosecutors said evidence showed that they were.
Press releases announcing the arrest, the indictment and the ensuing restrictions on the Tates’ movements made headlines around the world. But Mr. Tate, facing the prospect of prison, didn’t retreat from the controversy. He used it.
From Tucker to Barron
After his arrest, Mr. Tate hired Joseph D. McBride, a lawyer who had defended Trump supporters accused of insurrection at the Capitol. In short order, Mr. McBride pitched his brash new client to the conservative host Tucker Carlson.
In some ways, it was an odd pairing. Mr. Carlson was a proud husband who promoted Christian family values. But he had been ousted from Fox News after lawsuits exposed offensive language in his private messages to colleagues. He was building his own show on Twitter. And Mr. Tate, who had been reinstated on the platform by Elon Musk, had millions of followers there.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. McBride recalled telling Mr. Carlson that if he flew to Romania for a sit-down with Andrew, “I know we’ll break the internet.”
He was right. The 2023 interview, recorded at Mr. Tate’s luxury home on the outskirts of Bucharest, has drawn more than 112 million views.
They spent much of the two-and-a-half-hour conversation discussing their shared beliefs, including what they saw as a left-wing war on masculinity. Mr. Carlson didn’t press Mr. Tate on his porn operation or his previous comments about exploiting women.
Mr. Carlson misrepresented the criminal allegations in Romania, saying that they involved no sex crimes or violence, or any actions that could be considered trafficking.
“That’s not actually human trafficking,” Mr. Carlson said of the charges. “I don’t care what you call it, you weren’t buying, even accused of buying and selling anyone.”
Asked recently about the interview, Mr. Carlson told The Times, “If I misstated their indictment or got the facts wrong, I sincerely apologize.”
He added, “It doesn’t change my view that the Tates, whatever their personal behavior, had a message worth hearing.”
The interview helped burnish Mr. Tate’s reputation. Charlie Kirk, the conservative youth organizer and Trump adviser, was among those who tuned in.
“Now I see why he’s popular,” Mr. Kirk said on his podcast. While he expressed disgust over Mr. Tate’s pornography business, he agreed that masculinity was under siege. “He is hitting on something that you’re not allowed to say, where there’s a lot of truth to it.”
Candace Owens, another popular podcaster, flew to Romania and conducted her own sympathetic interview of Mr. Tate. She told her audience it was a mistake to judge him for his past comments or the ostentatious content he posted.
“This is how guys have fun,” she said, “the same way that girls sit around and talk about ‘Real Housewives.’”
In other interviews, Mr. Tate drew parallels that he saw between himself and Mr. Trump: both booted from social media, both criminally prosecuted, both victims of political attacks.
In September 2023, Mr. Trump shared on Truth Social, his social media platform, a video of Tristan defending him. “Thank you!” Mr. Trump wrote.
Mr. McBride, the brothers’ lawyer, pressed their case in meetings with members of Congress, according to an interview he gave to the Republican operative Roger Stone. Mr. McBride said both male and female lawmakers were “outraged” at the brothers’ treatment.
Don Jr. showed support, too. “You’ve got people attacking you as far as I’m concerned,” he told Mr. Tate in a June 2024 conversation live-streamed on X, the renamed Twitter platform. “They just want to silence you.”
His younger brother Barron was also a fan.
That spring, as his father was going after young male voters on the campaign trail, the teenager hosted a dinner at Mar-a-Lago for influencers. Among them was Mr. Waller, who has helped run the Tates’ courses and told The Times he is widely seen as the “third brother.”
The conversation that night meandered, Mr. Waller said, from “calling each other degenerate names” to discussing potential running mates for Mr. Trump, who also made an appearance and agreed to go on the podcast of another guest, Patrick Bet-David.
Mr. Waller has tried to play a “big brother” role for Barron, he said, visiting Mar-a-Lago and talking to him about dating. The president’s youngest son is “not a bad ally to have — let’s be frank,” he said.
He and Barron spoke to Andrew over Zoom last year, Mr. Waller said, while the teenager was having a suit fitted by Mr. Waller’s tailor. Although they discussed the Romanian case, Barron did not say anything about helping the Tates, Mr. Waller said. They also talked about supporting Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign on their online platforms.
That summer, when a young man tried to assassinate Mr. Trump, Mr. Tate told reporters that he had talked to Barron after the shooting.
“I’m very close to the Trump family,” he added. “I look forward to, once I am free, being with Donald Trump in person and reminding him that he’s a bulletproof badass.”
Allies Ascend
When Andrew texted in January that the Trump administration was “on top of things,” he didn’t name names.
But several of his supporters had found roles in the incoming government.
Paul Ingrassia, who was initially named White House liaison to the Justice Department, had once been part of the Tates’ legal team. Alina Habba, a counselor to the president who would later serve a brief stint as New Jersey’s top prosecutor, told Andrew on a podcast in January that “I got your back over here.”
And Mr. Grenell, a special presidential envoy, privately discussed the Tates’ case with Romanian officials, The Times found.
At Mar-a-Lago last December, he met Victor Ponta, an adviser to Romania’s prime minister.
Mr. Ponta had traveled to Mr. Trump’s Florida club to make inroads with the president-elect’s inner circle, he told The Times in an interview in Bucharest. His country was in a defensive crouch for its handling of a presidential election. Its highest court had tossed out the first round of votes, citing evidence that Russia had meddled on behalf of the winner, a far-right candidate. Donald Trump Jr. and Elon Musk, among other American conservatives, accused Romania of undermining democracy.
Mr. Ponta sensed that informal diplomacy would be a big part of the incoming Trump administration. And Mr. Grenell, who would soon negotiate the release of several American detainees in Venezuela, was already positioning himself as a forceful operator.
When asked by The Times whether he and Mr. Grenell discussed the Tates’ case, Mr. Ponta affirmed that they had. “Maybe he saw himself as releasing all the American hostages around the world,” he said, without elaborating further.
Last month, Mr. Ponta backpedaled. In a text exchange with The Times, he said he didn’t recall whether he and Mr. Grenell had talked about the Tates. He then said he was sure they had not.
Mr. Grenell also discussed the Tates’ case in mid-February, with Romania’s then foreign minister, Emil Hurezeanu, when they crossed paths at a security conference in Munich, as first reported by The Financial Times.
Mr. Grenell disputed the characterization of the encounter, saying in a statement to The Times that it had become exaggerated in media accounts. “I simply ran into him in the hallway,” he said. The foreign minister asked him if he stood by an old tweet showing support for the Tates, he said, and he replied yes. “I have never met the Tate Brothers, I’ve never been to Romania,” Mr. Grenell said. His statement did not address the Mar-a-Lago conversation.
Soon after the Munich conference, the prime minister posted on social media that the United States had not made any requests or demands on Romania.
‘The Tate Escape’
By then, the Tates’ legal problems were snowballing.
In Britain, the women who had accused Andrew of rape and assault a decade earlier were suing him in civil court. And prosecutors had authorized trafficking and rape charges against the brothers based on allegations involving three other women.
In America, Homeland Security anti-trafficking agents had been conducting interviews about the Tates, according to people familiar with the confidential investigation. The agents were working with federal prosecutors who would go on to win the conviction of Sean Combs, the music mogul known as “Diddy.” Both offices declined to comment.
In Romania, a judge had invalidated the 2023 indictment, citing procedural mistakes. But the prosecutors were trying to correct them and move forward with a case.
They had presented evidence that, since 2014, the brothers had between them coerced more than 30 other women, including a 17-year-old, into their pornography operation, court records show.
Mr. Tate was also accused of having sex with a 15-year-old and trying to bribe her to stay quiet. She told investigators he had beaten her with a belt and choked her until she passed out, according to the documents.
The Tates have denied all criminal wrongdoing and Andrew has contested the civil claims.
They said the new women cited in the Romanian investigation did not consider themselves trafficking victims. And they argued that being confined without an indictment violated their rights.
They got their break in late February. The order came down instructing prosecutors to negotiate with them, according to two people familiar with the move who were not authorized to discuss it. The prime minister believed the Trump administration would be happy with the outcome, a third person said.
On Feb. 25, the Tates officially requested to have their travel restrictions removed.
In a text message the next day, Mr. Tate shared his long-sought victory with someone close with him.
In the early hours of Feb. 27, the brothers drove to the airport, as documented in a video titled “The Tate Escape.” They beamed at each other as the plane took off for Florida.
When asked that day whether the Trump administration had aided in the Tates’ release, their lawyer, Mr. McBride, told The Times: “Do the math. These guys are on the plane.”
A Rift on the Right
From the moment they arrived on U.S. soil, the Tates encountered pushback.
Their electronic devices were confiscated by border control officials. Mr. Ingrassia, by then the White House liaison to Homeland Security, tried and failed to have their phones returned, ProPublica reported. (Mr. Ingrassia denied the account.)
That night in Miami, the brothers celebrated over cigars with Mr. Waller, he said. But public backlash was mounting, even among some prominent conservatives.
Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro denounced the Tates. Some Republican leaders spoke out, too.
“I certainly don’t think that we should be using any influence in our government to try to get him out of what seemed to be extremely serious charges in Romania,” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri told HuffPost, referring to Andrew.
After Mr. DeSantis said the brothers were not welcome in Florida, the state’s attorney general announced a criminal investigation of them.
As the right-wing rift over the Tates cracked open, Mr. Stone, the Republican operative, deleted an X post saying Mr. Grenell had secured their release. Ms. Habba said that she had “no part” in lifting the Tates’ travel ban.
And Mr. Trump had already said he knew nothing about it.
In mid-March, the brothers flew back to Romania for a court appearance. One of Andrew’s then-girlfriends, Brianna Stern, told the police in Beverly Hills he had assaulted her before he left. On social media, she shared several of his text messages.
Prosecutors declined to bring charges, citing insufficient evidence. Ms. Stern is suing Andrew, and he has countersued, claiming defamation. He and Tristan are also suing a woman in Florida who is cited as a victim in the Romanian investigation.
In recent months, Andrew has continued to weigh in on American politics, including calling for “civil war” after Mr. Kirk’s assassination. But while he and his brother have flown in and out of Romania, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, they have not returned to the States.
Many of his allies have stopped publicly defending him.
An exception is Nick Fuentes, a rising voice known for his antisemitic and sexist rhetoric. He and Mr. Tate, both critics of Israel, have lavished each other with praise.
Mr. Tate may not be a paragon of Christian morality, Mr. Fuentes said in an October interview with Mr. Carlson. “But men are going with him because he’s putting women in their place.”
Matei Barbulescu contributed reporting. Produced by Eli Murray.
Photo credits for illustration: Robert Ghement/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (Tate brothers); Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press (Donald Trump Jr.); Pool photo by Chip Somodevilla (Barron Trump); Gage Skidmore/ZUMA Press Wire (Candace Owens); Bill Bowdon/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Joseph McBride); Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press (Tucker Carlson); Kenny Holston/The New York Times (Alina Habba); Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (Richard Grenell).
Megan Twohey is an investigative reporter at The Times. Her work has prompted changes to the law, criminal convictions and cultural shifts.
The post How a Manosphere Star Accused of Rape and Trafficking Was Freed appeared first on New York Times.
