Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate, brothers who have made millions off their work as online “manosphere” influencers, arrived by private plane in Florida on Thursday after Romanian authorities lifted travel restrictions against them. The brothers, who hold American and British citizenship, were indicted in Romania last year on a variety of charges, including forming an organized criminal group to sexually exploit women in Romania, the United States, United Kingdom and other countries; human trafficking; the trafficking of minors; sex with a minor and money laundering. Andrew Tate was also charged with rape. 

In a statement, Romanian authorities said that although they were allowed to leave the country, Andrew and Tristan Tate are still required to appear “before the judicial bodies upon each summons” or else face “a stricter deprivation of liberty measure.” The brothers have consistently denied all allegations against them.

In a post on social media, Joseph McBride, the brothers’ U.S.-based attorney, said, “Romania rightly decided it didn’t have the evidence needed to hold them any longer.”

While it is unclear why they were allowed to leave Romania, why they are headed back to the United States and what, if any, actions will be taken against them once they are on American soil, The 19th explains who the Tate brothers are and why this latest chapter has brought them back into the news. 

Who is Andrew Tate?

Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist and “king of toxic masculinity,” is a 38-year-old former championship kickboxer who first gained broad attention when he appeared on the British reality show “Big Brother” in 2016. Tate first came under scrutiny for past homophobic and racist Tweets, which were discovered while he was on the show. He was kicked off the show before the season ended; initial reports said his removal happened because a video of him beating a woman with a belt surfaced during filming, though Tate and the woman said the beating was consensual. Later reporting indicated that Tate was removed from the show after producers learned of an ongoing investigation by British authorities over an alleged rape. (The case was ultimately closed in 2019, with no charges filed against him.) 

By 2022, Tate had become an Internet phenomenon, building notoriety and accumulating extraordinary wealth through his social media work. Tate founded Hustler’s University, which charged a monthly fee to teach young men how to make money outside of traditional employment and was eventually shut down under multiple accusations of it being a pyramid scheme; The Real World, an app-based platform offering instruction to teenage boys on how to become “real men,” which Google and Apple removed from their app stores in 2023; and The War Room, a self-described “global network” intended to “free the modern man from socially induced incarceration” that later faced accusations of grooming women into sex work through its “Pimpin’ Hoes Degree” course, aimed at teaching men to manipulate and socially isolate women.

In 2024, Tate also launched a meme coin called DADDY — “for the patriarchy,” he wrote, adding, “make me a fucking sandwich females.”

Tate built a reputation as a key influence in the “manosphere” community, vocal and ever-present with his far-right political views and personal ideology about women’s inferiority to men. He has claimed that sexual assault victims bear the responsibility for what has been done against them and has said that women become the property of their husbands after marriage.  

Tate has maintained a massive online presence throughout his time in the public eye. He has over 10.7 million followers on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, which banned him multiple times before being bought by Elon Musk in 2022 and changing its name. Musk reinstated Tate’s X account when he assumed ownership of the platform. 

He was also banned from Instagram in 2022, when he had over 4.6 million followers. He has since been reinstated on the platform; currently, he has over 773,000 followers there, with hundreds of thousands more on YouTube. 

In a 2021 podcast interview, Tate boasted, “You can’t slander me because I will state right now that I am absolutely sexist and I’m absolutely misogynist, and I have fuck you money and you can’t take that away.”

Why were Andrew and Tristan Tate arrested by the Romanian government?

The Tate brothers moved to Romania from the United Kingdom. At the time, Andrew Tate talked about it being less likely that he would face rape charges in Romania because of the evidentiary standards there. He also criticized the #MeToo movement, grounding his criticism on his belief that women could ruin a man’s life on a whim if they so desired. 

The United States embassy in Romania received a report in April 2022 that an American citizen was being held against her will at a property owned by Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan. Romanian police raided the property and a webcam studio run by the brothers, finding four women, two of whom said they were being held against their will. Several months later, the Romanian government arrested and charged the brothers and their two female accomplices on charges of human trafficking and forming an organized crime group. 

In August 2024, Romanian officials expanded their investigation into the Tates to involve allegations from 35 other women; new allegations included human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, influencing statements and money laundering. 

What has the Trump administration said about the Tate brothers?

Earlier this month, Andrew Tate tweeted, “The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back. And they will be better than ever. Hold on.”

The Tates have been under house arrest since their detainment by Romanian officials in 2022.  The Financial Times reported that the Trump administration had asked Romanian officials to return the Tates’ passports to them and allow them to travel while the criminal case against them proceeds in court. 

Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu told The Financial Times that Trump’s presidential envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, had raised the Tates’ case with him. In a statement to The Financial Times, Grenell said, “I support the Tate brothers as evident by my publicly available tweets.”

Additionally, Paul Ingrassia, a former Tate attorney, is now a White House liaison for the Department of Justice. Ingrassia has previously said that the Tate brothers were “sacrificed on the altar of the Matrix under the banner of egregious crimes they never committed”.

How else is the Trump administration connected to the Tate brothers?

Andrew Tate has been friends with President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. since 2016; the younger Trump has called the brothers’ detention in Romania “absolute insanity.” While campaigning this summer, Trump and now Vice President JD Vance appeared on podcasts of frequent Tate collaborators and supporters Adin Ross and the Nelk Boys. 

Elon Musk, the tech mogul who is now the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the new Trump administration and has been tasked with efforts to slash federal spending and the federal workforce, has also spoken out in support of Andrew Tate before, voicing his support for Tate’s past proclamations of intent to run for prime minister of the United Kingdom. 

The Tates have espoused on X conspiracy theories about USAID, the same agency that Musk has made a key target of DOGE and one that he has called the “propaganda arm of The Matrix.” Just last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, Musk claimed that his work with the administration was an effort in “fighting the Matrix.”

Asked on Thursday about the Tate brothers returning to the U.S., Trump said: “I didn’t know anything about that.”