Did the White House lobby help end his travel ban?

Andrew and Tristan Tate, the controversial British-American social media influencers accused of rape, human trafficking and money laundering, have been freed from travel restrictions in Romania after several high-level White House officials took an interest in their case.

It’s unclear what, if any, role Donald Trump’s administration may have played in their release, but one of Trump’s top envoys is said to have raised the case with Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu at a security conference in Munich earlier this month.

Andrew Tate rose to fame after appearing on the UK reality show Big Brother, and later making a series of extreme and controversial statements about women and politics on social media.

The pair ran a webcam business and were charged with human trafficking and rape along with two Romanian female suspects in June 2023.

They also face separate, unrelated allegations of rape and human trafficking in the UK, and civil suits in the US and UK. They deny all the allegations, which their US lawyer calls “defamatory and unequivocally false”.

On Thursday the brothers arrived in Florida after previously being banned from leaving Romania while the case against them is pending.

Lawyers for the pair say they will return to Bucharest for court hearings.

When asked about the Tates at the White House on Thursday, President Trump said: “I know nothing about that.”

But the brothers have been the subject of recent high-level discussions between the US and Romania.

Romanian officials say US counterparts brought up the brothers’ case with the Romanian government earlier this month, a story first reported by the Financial Times.

And Trump special envoy Richard Grenell raised the issue again at a security conference in Munich.

Hurezeanu said the Tates were mentioned during that conversation, but denied being pressured to release the pair.

The Tate brothers are Trump supporters and also have ties to figures in his administration.

One of Tate’s lawyers now works as White House liaison to the US justice department.

Paul Ingrassia was part of a team representing the Tate brothers in a defamation lawsuit they filed in Florida against several of their alleged victims.

Ingrassia also acted as Tate’s publicist and says he got the influencer onto a show hosted by Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host.

He has praised Tate in online posts. In one dating from July 2023, he called Tate “an extraordinary human being” who was offering “a dying West some hope for renewal”.

Ingrassia did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

The Tates have also been talked about by several people in Trump’s orbit, including Donald Trump Jr and Elon Musk.

Trump Jr once called Tate’s detention in Romania “absolute insanity”.

Musk reinstated Andrew Tate’s account, which had been banned on X, and suggested, perhaps in jest, that Tate would make a good UK prime minister.

Joseph McBride, a lawyer representing the Tates in a defamation case they have filed against several of their accusers in Florida, said in a statement: “They feel secure in America for several reasons, the primary one being that Donald Trump is the president.”

The statement alleged that the Tates and others are victims of “weaponised legal systems” and “politically motivated prosecutions”.

McBride did not respond to questions on whether White House officials played any role in the removal of travel restrictions against the Tate brothers.

Trump and his advisers know the political power of the manosphere – a popular and very online subculture that attracts fans of mixed martial arts fighting, video games, cryptocurrencies and other stereotypically male pursuits.

It’s a sprawling scene that includes men who reject the company of women entirely, a “pick-up artist” scene filled with tips on how to find casual hookups, and plenty of mainstream podcasts and YouTube channels filled with bro-type humour.

The president’s advisers targeted the same audiences during last year’s election campaign, when Trump, JD Vance and others in his orbit went on podcasts and did interviews with new media outlets.

The views of the Tate brothers lie at one of the manosphere’s extreme edges. Andrew Tate himself has made no secret of his self-described misogynist – women-hating – and sexist views.

On podcasts and online clips he talks about how women are property, how men shouldn’t allow girlfriends to go out without them or talk to other men.

In extremely graphic language, he’s described violence against women and talked about how sexual assault victims bear responsibility for rape.

Tate and his brother at the same time sell a glamorous lifestyle of expensive properties, cigars and luxury cars that includes self-improvement messages directed at young men – an image that garnered him a large audience before he was booted off most mainstream social media platforms.

He told the BBC in a 2023 interview: “I preach hard work, discipline. I’m an athlete, I preach anti-drugs, I preach religion, I preach no alcohol, I preach no knife crime. Every single problem with modern society I’m against.”

Like many other extreme influencers, in the face of criticism he often claims his posts are satire or jokes, mocking his detractors as his messages spread further, propelled by online outrage.

The pair’s supporters were thrilled with his release and eager to proclaim their innocence, despite the outstanding charges against them.

Four British women who have filed a civil lawsuit against Andrew Tate meanwhile issued a statement calling on UK authorities to “take action”, saying they were “in disbelief and feel re-traumatised by the news”.

And support for the Tates is far from universal among Trump supporters and American conservatives, many of whom moved to immediately distance themselves from the brothers.

Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, where Tates landed on Thursday, said of their activities: “Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct.”

The state’s attorney general later said he would open a preliminary inquiry into the Tates and said Florida has “zero tolerance for human trafficking and violence against women”.

In the conservative Washington Examiner, podcaster Brady Leonard wrote: “Tate’s obnoxious, misogynistic brand is toxic to everyone besides electorally insignificant corners of social media.”

Matt Lewis, a US conservative political commentator who has been critical of Trump in the past, said advocating on behalf of Tate “fits in with the ethos of the Maga world right now, which is: ‘let’s be tough guys'”.

“But I also think it speaks to a legitimate problem, which we have seen in the last couple decades, a problem with men…where there’s an epidemic of loneliness, a sense the world is passing them by, a sense that modernity has made it harder to be successful as a husband and a father. I think that’s had some real psychic effects,” he said.

“There’s a pretty good contingency of Trump’s supporters who are probably going to welcome this guy and probably even see him as a victim of persecution.”