FOR ACCUSED SEX TRAFFICKERS AND RAPISTS, Andrew and Tristan Tate have been a real hit with the American right over the years.

A gleeful Tucker Carlson visited the Romanian compound shared by the brothers while they were under house arrest, gushing over how famous the two manosphere social media stars were. Candace Owens hosted Andrew Tate for friendly interviews and has attacked his victims. And Benny Johnson interviewed Andrew Tate in 2025, with a promo image showing crying liberals reflected in their sunglasses.

Hell, even Trump world luminaries have saddled up with the Tates. Alina Habba, Trump’s former lawyer who briefly and unlawfully served as a U.S. attorney, appeared on Johnson’s show with Tate, saying she was a big fan of his. Trump envoy Ric Grenell reportedly lobbied Romania to allow the brothers to leave the country. After their devices were seized in 2025 when they entered the United States, White House staffer and former Tate lawyer Paul Ingrassia intervened to get them back to the brothers. Trump son Barron reportedly “admires” Andrew Tate, and has told the far-right star he thinks the Romanian case against him on charges of human trafficking, trafficking of minors, and rape is unfair.

The chumminess toward the Tates was always controversial and grotesque given the nature of the allegations against them. But the most recent discoveries make that chumminess look far more damning.

As the brothers sit in a Miami jail awaiting extradition to the United Kingdom on charges including rape, assault, and trafficking, newly unsealed court documents reveal an even more sinister side to Andrew Tate’s alleged sex crimes—no small feat, given that Tate has been open from the beginning about building a business empire premised on exploiting women through sexual webcam performances.

The most eye-catching of the new revelations involves bestiality. One of the charges involves Tate possessing an image of “a person performing an act of intercourse with a live animal, namely an eel.” Another makes a similar claim about an image involving a horse.

But the most serious new allegations relate to Andrew Tate’s alleged work to get a 17-year-old girl to produce pornography.

According to the documents, Tate taught the girl to film herself as she took an extreme action to her genitals. He did so because a man was willing to pay him $1,000 a day for videos of the act. In a text message, Tate allegedly said he “told her she had to do it.”

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Both brothers face rape charges, with Andrew often accused of choking women to the point of unconsciousness as he raped them. In one account in the new files, a woman regains consciousness only because Tate is crying on her:

Andrew Tates’ [sic] tears were splashing on her face, and he was crying, saying, “I love you ... that’s why I am raping you because I love you.” She remembers thinking that he was a psychopath and that she had let a serial killer in her house.

This is far from the first time Tate’s alleged crimes have been laid out in horrifying detail. And while the newly unsealed files are especially explicit, it’s been clear for years that the Tate brothers abused women—often because they said so themselves.

In fact, one of the stranger things about the Tates’ rise among commentators and podcasts on the American right is how so much of it happened after their initial sex-trafficking arrest in 2022.

Will those commentators now have a change of heart? I wouldn’t hold your breath.

In the wake of the bestiality porn and underage pornography allegations, I have seen none of the Tates’ erstwhile backers walk back their support. Johnson, Carlson, and Owens have all been silent. So have onetime Tate pals like Donald Trump Jr.

Indeed, there appears to be no appetite at all in MAGA media to reflect on how the Tates have been treated as podcast-friendly bad boys rather than prolific alleged sex criminals and pornographers. The lone sane person here may be talk-radio host Erick Erickson, who asked on his substack on Wednesday why right-wing media embraced this guy after he was already charged with sex trafficking. It doesn’t seem like anyone else will be joining him.

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