Andrew Tate is back in the U.S. What’s next for his trafficking charges?

The brothers have amassed millions of followers, many of them young men, by championing hyper-masculinity. Andrew Tate has said that rape victims bear some responsibility for their attack, that women are the property of their husbands and that he needs to have authority over the women he dates.

Both brothers are dual citizens of the United States and the United Kingdom. Here’s what to know about the Tate brothers and what’s next in their case.

Who are Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate?

Andrew Tate, whose fans have described him as “the king of toxic masculinity,” rose to some prominence as a champion kickboxer and, in 2016, as a contestant on the reality TV show “Big Brother UK.” He was kicked off the show after video surfaced that appeared to show him hitting a woman with a belt, although Tate and the woman in the video said that what happened was consensual, according to the BBC.

After Tate was booted, fans of the show unearthed some of his past tweets in which he hurled homophobic and racial slurs at other users. Since then, he has said rape victims “bear some responsibility” for what happens to them and that husbands own their wives. He’s falsely claimed that depression “isn’t real.”

Like his older brother, Tristan Tate is a former kickboxing champion and gained notoriety on a reality TV show, in his case “Shipwrecked” in 2011.

Andrew Tate has built a media empire by portraying himself as a self-help expert for men. He’s often seen smoking cigars next to fast cars and attractive women. Beyond those superficial aspects, he’s pushed young men to embrace what he describes as a traditional form of masculinity. He’s created his own language, lauding disciples as fellow “Top G’s” while detractors are “brokies.”

In 2022, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and the social media site then known as Twitter banned Tate from their platforms. But after purchasing Twitter in late 2022, billionaire Elon Musk reinstated him as part of a larger effort to allow firebrands back onto the platform.

What are they charged with?

In December 2022, the Tate brothers were arrested in Romania and charged with human trafficking and forming an organized crime group, allegations they have denied. Officials let the Tates out of jail in March 2023, putting them under house arrest, a restriction that was lifted in August of that year. Still, for the last year and a half, officials forbade the Tates from leaving the country, worried they would not return, and required them to regularly report to a police station.

Conviction in Romania on charges of human trafficking can carry penalties of three to 10 years. For rape, they range between five and 10 years.

The Tates are facing similar allegations in their former home, Britain. In 2024, police in Bedfordshire, England, issued arrested warrants for two men in their 30s while investigating rape and human trafficking. The Tates said at the time that they were the targets of the warrants, which stemmed from “allegations of sexual aggression” from 2012 through 2015. The brothers deny the British charges as well.

What are the Tate brothers’ political views?

Both brothers frequently champion right-wing views about U.S. and European politics and cheered President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. On Feb, 12, Andrew Tate posted on X: “The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back. And they will be better than ever. Hold on.”

Tristan Tate has echoed those sentiments, writing on X that Trump “will bring America back.” In November, he celebrated Trump’s 2024 election win and claimed credit for making young men “immune” to what he called a “woke mind virus.”

U.S. officials brought up the case with the Romanian government this month, and Richard Grenell, Trump’s special missions envoy, also raised it several days later, the Financial Times reported. Romanian foreign ministry officials said Thursday that U.S. officials exerted no pressure in the case and that the Romanian judiciary “is independent and is the sole authority responsible for making decisions in an ongoing investigation or trial.”

When asked whether his administration pressured Romanian officials to release the Tates, Trump on Thursday said, “I know nothing about that.”

Andrew Tate is trying to parlay his online influence into political power. Last month, he started a political party in the U.K.: the Britain Restoring Underlying Values, or BRUV, party. (“Bruv” is a British slang term that loosely means “bro.”)

In a 20-page slideshow in which he referred to himself as “Prime Minister Tate,” the influencer outlined a platform that would cap non-British residents at 10 percent to “maintain cultural balance,” prohibit “LGBTQ+ propaganda” from schools and replace modern art with statutes and monuments honoring British heroes.

What’s next for the Tate brothers?

While Thursday’s ruling allowed the Tate brothers to leave Romania for the first time in the more than two years since they were arrested, they are still criminally charged. They remain under “judicial supervision,” which requires that they answer to Romanian officials, “including appearing before authorities when summoned,” Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism said in a statement.

Last year, a Romanian court ruled that the Tates would be extradited to Britain after legal proceedings in Romania ended. It was not clear how their departure from Romania to the U.S. on Thursday would affect the British case.

A lawyer representing four women who have sued Andrew Tate in Britain, accusing him of sexually abusing them, said they were “absolutely distraught” by reports of American interference in the Tates’ criminal case, the BBC reported.

They are “absolutely bewildered why the Trump administration has decided to interfere in this way,” attorney Matthew Jury told the British news outlet.

The women issued their own statement: “We hope that the Romanian and the UK authorities will be left alone to do their jobs.”

Amar Nadhir, Victoria Craw, Timothy Bella, Brittany Shammas, Sara Sorcher, Ellen Francis, Will Sommer, Karla Adam and Loveday Morris contributed to this report.