Trump White House officials advocating for accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate!?
Tate and his brother are prohibited from leaving Romania, where both face criminal charges followed by extradition to the UK for a separate civil case
British attorney Matthew Jury, who represents the victims in the UK civil action against influencer/entrepreneur and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate, says the Trump administration’s recent actions and public statements made by members of President Trump’s staff give the appearance that the White House is improperly interfering on Tate’s behalf.
The alleged international sex traffickers, Andrew and Tristan Tate, have an extradition order to the UK for a criminal investigation and civil proceedings pending against them. The brothers currently await criminal trial in Romania, where they are under judicial control and forbidden from leaving the country. The brothers are dual U.S./UK citizens.
The Financial Times reported on Monday, February 17 (archived here) that U.S. officials brought up the topic of Andrew and Tristan Tate during a phone call with the Romanian government last week. A request was made for the brothers to get their passports back and to have their international travel restrictions lifted.
Richard Grenell, a close diplomatic advisor to President Trump who holds the title of Presidential Envoy for Special Missions, followed up when he met with Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu during a meeting in Munich last week. According to USA Today, Hurezeanu told EuroNews Romania that Grenell said he “remains interested in the fate of the Tate brothers.”
EuroNews
This morning the English-language version of EuroNews elaborated:
Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell has taken an interest in Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist influencer who is facing criminal charges in Bucharest, raising the topic of lifting the travel ban against him and his brother Tristan with Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu in Munich.
No pressure, just a chat, [the] Romanian foreign minister said.
“What I discussed with Mr. Grenell was rather cordial, informal, very concentrated” Hurezeanu told Euronews Romania on Tuesday.
“There was a meeting in the hotel foyer when I asked him if he were coming to Romania,” he explained. “(Grenell) added at the end that he remains interested in the fate of [the] Tate brothers … and we went our separate ways.”
On Tuesday night Matthew Jury, a distinguished litigator who is licensed to practice as both a solicitor of England and Wales and attorney-at-law (New York), told BBC Newsnight he’s baffled by the Trump White House’s actions on the Tates’ behalf, and by recent public statements of support for the brothers from White House staff members.
BBC Newsnight
The Tates stand to be extradited to the UK upon the conclusion of the Romanian proceedings. According to Jury, if the Romanian government were to lift the travel restrictions, the Tates could abscond and evade justice in both Romania and the UK.
Simply raising the issue means something. It’s very clear from members of the Trump administration’s social media posts and public statements that there is a great deal of support for Tate, and I’m not clear as to why that is. Either they don’t know, or they don’t care about the nature of the allegations, and how serious they are. […] These are the most serious allegations of human trafficking, rape — serial rape — the trafficking of minors, and the rape of a 15-year-old girl. It doesn’t get more serious than that.
And to see the Trump administration lobbying for this man’s release, interfering in due process in Romania — but worse, as far as we consider, sitting here, interfering with due process in the UK. Tate is scheduled to be extradited from Romania, once the proceedings there are concluded. If Tate is given his passport back, it’s quite clear that there is a flight risk. Otherwise, he would not be under judicial control measures in Romania […] in the first place. […]
These are women who are the victims of the most horrible and horrific alleged crimes. And to see the most powerful man in the world support their alleged abuser is incredibly traumatizing. It’s retraumatizing for them. It’s gaslighting of a sort. And they’re absolutely bewildered as to why the Trump administration has decided to interfere in this way. […]
Jury said that both the criminal proceedings in Romania as well as the proceedings in the UK “should be allowed to take place, and run their course in the ordinary fashion, without interference. This is not politics, this is about due process and fair trial.”
The Tate brothers have consistently maintained that they are not guilty of the allegations, and that they are the targets of a smear campaign. They say their detractors seek to derail their popularity because of their unconventional take on “traditional” masculinity.
Who are the Tate brothers, and why are they so controversial?
Andrew Tate, 38, is a former kickboxer and mixed martial artist. He and his brother Tristan Tate, 37, became internet celebrities who promoted themselves and their business ventures online and through their “Tate Speech” podcast and other forums. The Tates made millions through a webcam venture that recruited women to interact with paying viewers and perform live sex acts for their viewers’ entertainment via the streaming service OnlyFans.
Building on their webcam business success, they developed content to teach other men how to earn passive income. Their initial effort was the “PhD” program, which stood for “Pimpin’ Hoes Degree.” It was offered on Andrew Tate’s own website CobraTate.com and marketed through his social media channels between 2016-2018. Ikran Dahir for Buzzfeed provides a detailed description of the course, which included tips for men such as how to create intriguing profiles on Instagram — which he called “the number one tool to get laid” compared to Tinder and other dating apps.
According to Buzzfeed, the Tates’ Hustlers University offered eleven online courses, at $500 each, that taught “pickup artist” skills and how to engage in emotional manipulation to control women (their “Loverboy Method,”) as well as money-making strategies such as affiliate marketing and crypto trading.
By August 2022 Andrew Tate had been deplatformed from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok over his misogynistic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. But Dahir’s investigation for Buzzfeed revealed that getting deplatformed helped the Tates go viral. The Tates moved their Hustlers University service to Discord, where it was earning the Tates as much as $11 million a month by October 2022. “But what the site sells more than anything is Tate himself, the cliché of a successful former athlete turned business owner who spends endless money on private jets, expensive watches and sports cars,” Dahir observed. An updated and expanded Hustlers University 2.0, later rebranded as The Real World, was offered as a $49.99 per month subscription service. Andrew Tate also sold personal access via his group chat on Telegram, called The War Room, for a one-time payment of $4,497.
In addition to the pending Romanian and UK cases involving trafficking and rape allegations, the Tates were found liable in December 2024 in British court for tax evasion and money laundering. The Westminster Magistrate’s Court concluded that the Tates had failed to pay taxes on approximately £21 million in revenue from their online businesses between 2014 and 2022. The court ruled that the Devon and Cornwall police could seize approximately $3.4 million from seven frozen bank accounts.
Separately, in Romania, a tax fraud investigation found the Tates owe approximately $6 million in unpaid income tax for undeclared earnings in Romania. Romanian officials have also investigated Andrew Tate for bribery. In February 2023, Reuters reported that Andrew Tate, while in Romanian police custody, directed associates to “recruit” two right-wing Romanian lawmakers to his cause. Reuters obtained transcriptions of the wiretapped phone calls that were submitted to a court by Romanian prosecutors. Tate also directed his associate to release “party clips” on social media showing at least one of his alleged trafficking victims dancing in Bucharest in order to undermine her kidnapping claims.
Answer and Counterclaim filed by defendant Jane Doe and her parents (“Jane Doe Brief”)
The Tates also have a civil case pending in Florida court. In Tate v. Jane Doe, the Tate brothers sued an alleged victim from the Romania case and her parents, who are all U.S. citizens, claiming that Jane Doe’s sworn affidavit in the Romania criminal investigation defamed them. The Tates are seeking in excess of $5 million in damages from Doe and her parents.
Doe alleges that the Tate brothers lured her to Romania to participate in a “webcam sex trafficking ring” through deception and coercion. Her answer and countersuit contends that her statements to Romanian prosecutors, made under oath, are true. Jane Doe’s attorney contends that after Jane cooperated with Romanian authorities in their human trafficking investigation, the Tates sued Jane and her parents as an act of witness intimidation to disrupt the Romanian prosecution. “The Tate brothers’ lawsuit against Doe is a grave abuse of process brought — not for any legitimate purpose — but instead, to bully and harass Doe into recanting her testimony,” Doe’s attorney Dani Pinter said in a statement.
A bombshell 183-page brief (also available here) filed February 10 on behalf of Jane Doe describes the Tate brothers as “self-confessed webcam pimps and pornographers who made their first million dollars from lying and deceiving women.” The filing includes transcripts of Andrew and Tristan Tate discussing their sex trafficking business and admitting to acts of coercive control and violent physical abuse — both publicly, in podcast interviews, as well as privately over text and audio messages. On February 11 the plaintiffs attempted to have the Jane Doe brief sealed by the court on an emergency basis, but the brief remains public.
A number of investigative journalists and influencers have also been documenting the Tates’ self-incriminating statements and other evidence against them — notably on X: Nick Monroe (@lobsterlooker), Nathan Livingstone (@TheMilkBarTV), @Gadget44027447, @CrayonMurders and @ThePaxWax.
@TheMilkBarTV on X
Why is the White House interfering with the cases in Europe?
The Trump administration’s interest in the Tates is apparently due to Paul Ingrassia, an attorney on the Tates’ legal team in the defamation case, who now serves as White House liaison to the Department of Justice. According to the DOJ: “The DOJ White House Liaison manages non-career appointments within DOJ, including promotions, on behalf of the Attorney General and the Attorney General’s Chief of Staff.” Ingrassia, a 2022 graduate of Cornell Law, had a prior stint as a Trump White House intern in 2018 according to LinkedIn.
@PaulIngrassia on X
In a July 19, 2023 press release Ingrassia was named as “an Associate Attorney at the McBride Law Firm […] assigned to work on the Tate Brothers’ civil case several months ago” and “part of the McBride Law Team that helped facilitate Tucker Carlson’s face-to-face interview with Andrew and Tristan Tate.” Ingrassia first became licensed to practice law in New York in 2024.
Paul Ingrassia’s Substack
In a July 18, 2023 Substack piece, Ingrassia argued that the brothers’ “one and only real crime is this: a message of self-discipline and ability to think freely.” Ingrassia claimed that the Tates are being unfairly targeted because they “used their digital platforms to subvert, rather than promote, the agenda of the dominant culture.”
On behalf of the McBride Law Firm, Ingrassia wrote: “concurrent with the lawsuit being waged against the Tate brothers’ accusers for smearing their good name in the mainstream media, is a congressional effort to raise awareness about their wrongful detention.” Ingrassia claimed the firm’s “advocacy campaign on the Hill” was imperative because the “geriatric lawmakers” demographic was outside the brothers’ “scope of influence,” and because bipartisan support to free “American citizens wrongfully detained overseas” could “have shockwaves across the broader cultural, political, and even legal landscape.”
Paul Ingrassia’s Substack
The July 11, 2023 Tucker Carlson “Tucker on Twitter” interview with Andrew Tate (available in full here or here) frames Tate as the victim of Woke, anti-masculine culture, and the spokesman for “a different vision.” Carlson even compares Tate to Julian Assange.
“Tate’s view,” Carlson pronounced in his introductory monologue, “is that men want respect, above all. It’s how they’re wired. In order to get respect, men must become worthy of it. They must become more impressive: Wake up early, work as hard as you can, stay sober, find God, keep yourself physically fit, don’t complain. That’s his worldview. Earlier generations of Western leaders might have found parts of Tate’s message inspiring. Now it’s seen as a threat. The media treated him as a criminal up until the day he was officially classified as one.”
About the Tates’ arrests and imprisonment in Romania “just after Christmas” in 2022, Carlson claimed: “The Tates were held without charges for three months, very likely with the encouragement of the British and the American governments.” Although at the time of the Bucharest interview Tate was under house arrest and facing charges of rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized crime group, Carlson apparently did not consult with Romanian authorities or the victims’ attorneys to fact-check Tate’s claims.
@TuckerCarlson on X
Few conservatives raised an eyebrow over the two-and-a-half-hour interview, but Carlson was condemned by pundits and media critics on the left of the political spectrum. Miles Klee in Rolling Stone faulted Carlson for failing to challenge Tate’s “cosmic gumbo of lies;” Amanda Marcotte in Salon suggested the interview was a deliberate move to promote Tate’s “evil” narrative, as well as a sign of desperation from Carlson and Elon Musk to boost Twitter engagement through Carlson’s “Tucker on Twitter” series.
@VICEWorldNews on X
Just last month, Alina Habba, President Trump’s legal spokesperson and Counselor to the President, chatted with Andrew Tate on The Benny Show: “I’m a big fan,” Habba gushed.
“I sympathize with you,” Habba told Tate, “because I think you go through a lot of the same ‘show-me-the-person-I’ll-find-the-crime’ that President Trump has gone through. […] I agree with everything you say, and I have your back, out here in the States. […] When I saw that you were going to be on, I said to Benny, I have to meet Andrew Tate. There is literally only one person with the same amount of anger and fire, and that’s probably me, and President Trump! But it’s because you love what’s right. And your being under siege, and I see it, and just keep fighting. […] We need strong, powerful voices like yours,” Habba said.
The Benny Show
Will the tides turn for the Tates?
Last month Andrew Tate announced that he was launching a political party in Great Britain called the Britain Restoring Underlying Values (BRUV) Party, and that he would promote his party with an eye toward positioning himself for the role of Prime Minister, declaring himself “the only hope and chance for the once-great Britain to repair itself from the eternal decline we are unfortunately being subjected to.”
Tate’s hyperbolic rant makes him sound more like an angry paranoiac with delusions of grandeur than a conservative firebrand. “I’m extremely rich and very successful,” he said. “And although this has not brought me much happiness or any new friends, it has certainly increased the variety and capability of my enemies. They have locked me in Romania for over three years. The UK foreign office instructed the Romanian foreign office to do exactly this, on false charges. Charges that even Romanian courts are now admitting were completely fabricated because they fear my influence.”
@cobratate on X
Today Forbes suggested the support from the Trump camp might be due to the Tates’ popularity among young males. “The ‘manosphere’ was considered important for Trump’s 2024 election victory, as he improved his share of the vote with young men,” Conor Murray wrote.
But President Trump, now serving his second presidential term at the age of 78, is unlikely to run for office again.
The supportive statements and actions of Trump officials Grenell, Ingrassia and Habba might be explained by Paul Ingrassia’s prior attorney-client relationship to the Tates, and possibly a direct interest in the outcome of their defamation suit. But what cannot be explained is the continued fawning of conservatives in the media. In addition to Tucker Carlson, from 2023 through to the present Benny Johnson, Candace Owens, Patrick Bet-David and Charlie Kirk have all platformed the Tates and continue to portray them sympathetically, as victims of prejudice and politicization.
Legal duo Viva Frei and Robert Barnes have also — inexplicably — consistently expressed skepticism over the Romanian prosecutors’ case and broader concerns about legal overreach and political motives. If the two were unable to access Romanian court documents, did they also fail to notice the abundant self-incriminating video clips and other posts circulating on social media? Did they even try to find out the facts?
In light of the newly-filed and publicly-accessible Jane Doe brief, also available here, and the abundant evidence it provides, there’s no longer any excuse for anyone to be confused about the Tates.