US President Donald Trump’s administration has pressured Romanian authorities to remove travel restrictions on Andrew Tate and his brother, according to a report.
Controversial influencer Mr Tate and his brother Tristan have been accused of various allegations in Romania, including criminal charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
The self-proclaimed misogynist and his brother are still facing charges in Romania. They are currently “under judicial control”, meaning he can travel through Romania "while adhering to the required legal conditions".
Both deny wrongdoing.
The Financial Times reported the Tates’ case was brought up by US officials in a phone call with the Romanian government last week.
When President Trump's special envoy Richard Grenell met with the Romanian foreign minister at the Munich Security conference in Germany, he then brought up the subject once more, multiple sources told the Financial Times.
A request was made to return the brothers' passports so they could travel until the court procedures were over, another source told the publication.
Mr Grenell has previously shown support for the Tate brothers on social media. He posted on X at the beginning of February that Romania was the “latest example” of how “USAid programs were weaponised against people and politicians who weren’t woke”.
Trump has frozen billions of dollars of overseas aid from the US, as he takes aim at the steps to close the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), arguing that its spending is "totally unexplainable".
The Tate brothers have more than ten million joint followers on social media, often posting 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”.
On Monday, Andrew Tate posted on X: “It was [President] Biden who locked us up in the first place. USAid-sponsored attack.
“UK Foreign Office heavily involved. They want me to serve time for tweets. None of the charges against me were ever real.
“I will do an exposé that will blow your minds about the levels of corruption under the Democrats and currently still in Europe.”
The brothers are also accused of rape and human trafficking in the UK, where Bedfordshire police are seeking to extradite them. A judge in Bucharest has said that the extradition request from Britain will be addressed after the case in Romania.
Romania’s foreign minister Emil Hurezeanu confirmed to local media that the US raised the issue of the Tate brothers.
“Richard Grenell told me he is interested in the fate of the Tate brothers,” he told G4Media. “I am interested, as you well know, in the fate of the Tate brothers.”
