Ric Grenell, a gay loyalist to President Donald Trump, reportedly “berated” a congressional staffer of the House Judiciary Committee this week after Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wrote a letter accusing Grenell of helping secure the relocation of alleged sex traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate from Romania into the United States.

Raskin’s letter — which was addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and carbon copied to Grenell and Attorney General Pam Bondi — noted that “on February 27, 2025, self-described misogynist Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan Tate, traveled to Florida despite facing charges in Romania for rape and human trafficking and having active arrest warrants in the United Kingdom for similar charges.”

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Raskin noted that Andrew Tate openly said that he relocated from the U.K. to Romania because he’d be less likely to face rape charges there due to the country’s stricter evidentiary standards. But in 2022, Romanian police raided the Tate brothers’ home and arrested them on charges of rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized crime group. The two also faced allegations from 35 women, accusing the brothers of trafficking minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, and money laundering.

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The brothers remained on house arrest until U.S. officials reportedly pressured the Romanian government to lift these travel restrictions over the objections of their alleged victims, Raskin wrote. On February 27, 2025, the brothers landed on a private jet in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Two weeks later, Andrew Tate allegedly assaulted his girlfriend Bri Stern in Los Angeles. Stern has since filed a lawsuit against Tate, alleging that he choked and hit her after sending her text messages in which he repeatedly called her a “b**ch,” said she deserved abuse, and demanded that she deliver his child.

“Romanian officials said that their U.S. counterparts brought up the brothers’ case earlier in February,” Raskin wrote, “and that Special Envoy Richard Grenell raised the issue with Romanian officials during the Munich Security Conference.” Raskin then asked for more information about the Trump administration’s involvement in the lifting of Romania’s travel restrictions on the Tate brothers.

Similar letters from congressmembers to administration officials are often sent without any official response. However, Grenell reportedly “berated” a House Judiciary Committee staffer over the phone, according to an unnamed source cited on NOTUS.org.

Grenell was allegedly “worked up” and said the letter’s research was “bad” and “f**king fake news” that a “simple Google search” would disprove. Grenell also allegedly said, “You’re going to ruin my reputation,” and said he was “going to go public” about the letter.

But when asked about the call, Grenell told NOTUS, “Your characterization of this conversation is absolutely wrong,” adding, “I would never say what he said I said. I sent an email to him too. Why don’t you get that from him? I put my concerns in writing… Just get it from the guy who already briefed you.”

The email asked the staffer if they chose to “purposely leave out the fact that the entire Romanian government said they were NOT pressured on this issue??!” Grenell also denied meeting with the Romanian foreign minister and claimed to have declined a meeting that the minister had requested with him.

“When you push fake news like this, you only damage yourself,” Grenell wrote in the email.

But Raskin wasn’t the only one to have accused Grenell of brokering the Tate brothers’ transit. Financial Times reported the same thing, as did the BBC.

The Tate brothers are both vocal supporters of President Trump. While Trump claimed to know nothing about the brothers’ relocation to the United States, MAGA loyalists criticized Trump for possibly orchestrating it.

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson posted on X that Trump supporters “should wait and see … if Trump really did bless allowing the Tate brothers to come to the US.” If so, he wrote, “It would be the primary exhibit that his administration is guided by a hyper-online right that is very out of touch with the real world and needs to touch grass.”

In Congress, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) criticized the brothers’ arrival in Florida, telling reporters, “I would hope our government wasn’t involved in any way. I don’t think conservatives should be glorifying this guy at all.”

Even Florida Gov. DeSantis (R) said, “Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct. I don’t know how it came to this. We were not involved. We were not notified. Clearly the federal government has jurisdiction whether they want to rebuff his entry into the United States.”

Andrew Tate rose to prominence in MAGA world as a podcasting star in the 2020s with his “explicitly sexist philosophy of masculinity,” according to Vox. He quickly became massively popular with young men and with well-known MAGA figures like Donald Trump Jr., transphobic billionaire Elon Musk, and President Trump’s former personal attorney and current adviser, Alina Habba.

Last December, an online money-making course belonging to Andrew Tate was hacked by pro-transgender hackers. The hackers changed the course’s primary chatroom with emojis that included the trans flag, a feminist fist icon, pictures of Tate draped in the rainbow flag, pics of him with enlarged buttocks, and icons that spelled out “Andrew Tate loves kissing femboys.” (Femboys is slang for effeminate men and boys.)

Andrew Tate also faces accusations of grooming women into sex work through a course offered on the platform called the “Pimpin’ Hoes Degree.”

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