Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate, the British American online influencers who have been held in Romania for two years over criminal investigations, left the country on Thursday for the United States, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The brothers boarded a flight on Thursday morning, according to the person, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the matter. In response to questions about the brothers, Romanian prosecutors said in a news release that they were still pursuing criminal investigations against two British American citizens. They did not name the people, but said they were allowed to leave Romania and had to “appear before judicial authorities whenever summoned.”
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Tates have faced a protracted legal battle with prosecutors, who charged the brothers with human trafficking and forming an organized crime group. According to Romanian prosecutors, the brothers misled several women into believing that they wanted a relationship with them. The women were instead housed in a compound near Bucharest and forced to appear in online pornographic videos, prosecutors said.
The Tates have repeatedly denied all the allegations against them and successfully appealed that indictment in a Bucharest court, which found that the case did not meet the requirements for a trial.
Prosecutors in Romania have since said they are investigating the brothers over other accusations of human trafficking and money laundering.
In recent weeks, the brothers have publicly aligned themselves more strongly with President Trump. “The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back,” Andrew Tate said on X earlier this month.
The Financial Times has reported that U.S. officials have urged Romania to lift travel restrictions on the brothers. Richard Grenell, a special envoy for the United States and a close ally of Mr. Trump, raised their case with the country’s foreign minister, Emil Hurezeanu, at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month. Mr. Grenell could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Hurezeanu had a “focused exchange “with Mr. Grenell at the conference, the country’s foreign affairs ministry said in a post on X at the time. The two officials “covered current topics of shared interest” between the two countries, the ministry said, but the post did not mention the Tate brothers.
Mr. Hurezeanu later told G4Media, an online news site that covers judicial issues, that he and Mr. Grenell had a brief conversation in a hallway at the conference, during which Mr. Grenell brought up the Tate brothers. Mr. Hurezeanu said he had requested another meeting with Mr. Grenell to find out “what his intentions were in relation to Romania,” but that the conversation never took place.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The brothers were also arrested in Romania in March 2024 on a separate warrant issued by the British authorities accusing them of human trafficking. A Bucharest court had ruled that the brothers should be extradited to Britain after the resolution of the Romanian cases. It was unclear on Thursday what the outcome of that extradition ruling would be.
Four British women have also sued Andrew Tate in 2024, claiming that he had raped and abused them. Earlier this month, an American woman sued the brothers for allegedly luring her to Romania and coercing her into sex work, the first suit filed in the U.S. against the Tates. The brothers have sued her for defamation.
They had been released from house arrest but remained in Romania under judicial control. Their lawyer had called them “political hostages.”
The post Tate Brothers Are Said to Leave Romania for the United States appeared first on New York Times.
