How a manosphere star accused of rape and trafficking was freed

The scandal boosted his fame, especially on social media, where he became a fierce supporter of Donald Trump. Donald Trump Jr liked one of his supportive Twitter posts and they soon agreed to meet, Andrew Tate recalled on a podcast. He went to Trump Tower in 2017.

“We still inbox each other every couple of days,” 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 ($42 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 secondary 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 organised 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 Andrew Tate, facing the prospect of prison, didn’t retreat from the controversy. He used it.

From Tucker to Barron

After his arrest, Tate hired Joseph McBride, a lawyer who had defended Trump supporters accused of insurrection at the US Capitol. In short order, McBride pitched his brash new client to conservative host Tucker Carlson.

In some ways, it was an odd pairing. 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 Tate, who had been reinstated on the platform by Elon Musk, had millions of followers there.

In an interview with the Times, McBride recalled telling Carlson that if he flew to Romania for a sit-down interview with Andrew, “I know we’ll break the internet.” He was right. The 2023 interview, recorded at Tate’s luxury home on the outskirts of Bucharest, has drawn more than 112 million views.

They spent much of the 2½-hour conversation discussing their shared beliefs, including what they saw as a left-wing war on masculinity. Carlson didn’t press Tate on his porn operation or his previous comments about exploiting women. Carlson misrepresented the criminal allegations in Romania, saying that they involved no sex crimes or violence, or any actions that could be considered trafficking.

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“That’s not actually human trafficking,” 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, Carlson told the Times, “If I misstated their indictment or got the facts wrong, I sincerely apologise.”

He added, “It doesn’t change my view that the Tates, whatever their personal behaviour, had a message worth hearing.”

The interview helped burnish Tate’s reputation. Conservative youth organiser and Trump adviser Charlie Kirk was among those who tuned in.

“Now I see why he’s popular,” Kirk said on his podcast. While he expressed disgust over 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 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, Tate drew parallels that he saw between himself and Donald Trump: both booted from social media, both criminally prosecuted, both victims of political attacks. In September 2023, Trump shared on Truth Social, his social media platform, a video of Tristan defending him. “Thank you!” Trump wrote.

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McBride, the brothers’ lawyer, pressed their case in meetings with members of Congress, according to an interview he gave to Republican operative Roger Stone. McBride said male and female lawmakers were outraged at the brothers’ treatment.

Donald Jr showed support, too. “You’ve got people attacking you as far as I’m concerned,” he told Tate in a June 2024 conversation livestreamed on X. “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 Waller, the mutual friend, who has helped run the Tates’ courses and told the Times he is widely seen as the “third brother.”

The conversation that night meandered, Waller said, from “calling each other degenerate names” to discussing potential running mates for Donald Trump, who also made an appearance and agreed to go on the podcast of another guest, Patrick Bet-David.

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 Tate over Zoom last year, Waller said, while the teenager was having a suit fitted by Waller’s tailor. Although they discussed the Romanian case, Barron did not say anything about helping the Tates, Waller said. They also talked about supporting Trump’s presidential campaign on their online platforms.

That summer, when a young man tried to assassinate Trump, Tate told reporters that he had talked to Barron after the shooting.

“I’m very close to the Trump family,” he said. “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 counsellor to the president who would later serve a brief stint as New Jersey’s top prosecutor, told Andrew on a podcast in January, “I got your back over here.”

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And 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.

Ponta had traveled to 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.

Ponta sensed that informal diplomacy would be a big part of the incoming Trump administration. And 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 Grenell discussed the Tates’ case, 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, Ponta backpedalled. In a text exchange with the Times, he said he didn’t recall whether he and Grenell had talked about the Tates. He then said he was sure they had not. 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.

Grenell disputed the characterisation 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,” 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 authorised 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.

Andrew 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 authorised to discuss it. The prime minister believed the Trump administration would be happy with the outcome, a third person said.

On February 25, the Tates officially requested to have their travel restrictions removed. In a text message the next day, Andrew Tate shared his long-sought victory with someone close with him.

In the early hours of February 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, McBride, told the Times: “Do the math. These guys are on the plane.”

A rift on the right

From the moment they arrived on US soil, the Tates encountered pushback. Their electronic devices were confiscated by border control officials. Ingrassia, by then the White House liaison to Homeland Security, tried and failed to have their phones returned, ProPublica reported. (Ingrassia denied the account.)

That night in Miami, the brothers celebrated over cigars with 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,” Republican senator Josh Hawley told HuffPost, referring to Andrew.

After 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, Stone, the Republican operative, deleted an X post saying Grenell had secured their release. Habba said that she had “no part” in lifting the Tates’ travel ban.

And 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 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. 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 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 US.

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 Andrew Tate, both critics of Israel, have lavished each other with praise.

Tate may not be a paragon of Christian morality, Fuentes said in an October interview with Carlson. “But men are going with him because he’s putting women in their place.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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