The Trump administration has pressured Romanian authorities to remove travel restrictions on the Tate brothers, reports say.
Self-described misogynist Andrew Tate has been accused of a string of allegations relating to the trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor and money laundering.
He is still facing charges, alongside his brother Tristan, and is currently “under judicial control”, meaning he can travel through Romania "while adhering to the required legal conditions". Both deny wrongdoing.
But the Financial Times reports that the Tates’ case was brought up by US officials in a phone call with the Romanian government last week.
The case was then brought up again by Donald Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell when he met the Romanian foreign minister at a conference in Munich, several sources told the FT.
Another source told the newspaper a request was made to return the brothers’ passports and allow them to travel while they wait for court proceedings to end.
Mr Grenell has previously shown his support for the Tate brothers on X. At the start of February, he posted on X that Romania was the “latest example” of how “USAid programs were weaponised against people and politicians who weren’t woke”.
The Trump administration has been trying to dismantle the six-decade-old US Agency for International Development (USAID), which Mr Trump and key ally Elon Musk have accused of being out of line with Mr Trump’s agenda.
The Tate brothers have 14 million followers on X between them, often posting across social media about male superiority and rejecting feminism.
Tristan Tate boasted on X in November about the Tate brothers’ role in the US election, claiming that “millions of young men in Europe and the USA have a healthy rightwing approach to politics that they would NOT have if Andrew Tate had never appeared on their phone screens”.
Meanwhile, Andrew Tate hit out on Monday saying that he was targeted by a “USaid sponsored attack” - insisting “none of the charges against me were ever real”.
The Tate brothers are due to be extradited to the UK after the proceedings in Romania after Bedfordshire Police secured a European arrest warrant for further separate allegations of rape and human trafficking.
Those allegations, which the two brothers “unequivocally deny”, date back to 2012-2015.
A separate civil lawsuit was reportedly filed last week by a woman in Florida, which alleged that the brothers coerced her into sex work after having lured her to Romania.
Earlier this month the controversial influencer was released from house arrest by a Romanian court after five months.
