There was "no pressure from the United States" in the case of Andrew and Tristan Tate, unconvincingly asserted Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu on Thursday, February 27, after their departure for the US. These two misogynist influencers, implicated in a vast investigation into human trafficking and rape in Romania, left the country earlier in the day aboard a private rental jet, bound for Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where they arrived in the evening.

But what else could explain the sudden turnaround by the Bucharest prosecutor's office, which, to everyone's surprise, agreed to give the two men back their passports, even though they had previously been under house arrest? Two weeks earlier, Donald Trump's special envoy, Richard Grenell, met Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu. During this meeting, Grenell, an avowed admirer of Andrew Tate, specifically asked the minister to allow the two brothers to travel, the Financial Times reported.

The Tate brothers, who hold dual American and British citizenship, are celebrities in the English-speaking world. A former kickboxing champion who became a social media star after a stint on reality TV, Andrew Tate is a virulently misogynistic influencer, who works on his "alpha male" image and attracts an audience mainly made up of young, disaffected men.

You have 74.76% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.