Transcription
Now, a comprehensive report in the New Yorker investigates what writer Heidi Blake calls Andrew Tate's empire of abuse. Blake plumbed through reams of private messages and sealed court records detailing violent and disturbing allegations.
Now, before I'm joined by Heidi, a warning, this conversation will contain descriptions of sexual violence which may be difficult to hear. Heidi Blake, I want to welcome you to the program. Thanks for being here.
Thank you so much for having me. You know, um, in reading this investigation and just reading the details, I literally almost became physically ill just from reading it. And then I had to think about what the victims went through in terms of what they went through when this was going on and then having to recount it not just to you but to authorities as well. And you point out this is really when it comes to Andrew Tate, you've documented it now, right? There are allegations of grooming, coercion, rape, trafficking, all kinds of abuse and so much of it out there for anyone to see in plain plain sight.
You know, this is ultimately a story about Andrew Tate, or is it really the institutions that have failed to stop him? Because as I said, I was floored by everything you uncovered.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think in a lot of ways this is a story about impunity um and about how the Tate brothers have managed to you know after spending so many years systematically exploiting women and bragging about the way in which they've systematically exploited women to their many followers are now managing to evade justice for those actions and to leverage their political connections particularly on the right wing in America to uh to to get away with it. And that was partly what um [clears throat] excuse me that was partly what prompted me to begin investigating this was that you know last year in February um shortly after Donald Trump's re-election Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate were freed from all travel restrictions in Romania where they faced very serious rape and human trafficking charges and were allowed to travel the world freely and since then have been proclaiming their innocence and declaring that the case against them is totally defunct and going nowhere. And that happened after the US applied pressure on Romania um and the prosecutors lifted those restrictions under a significant amount of pressure from the US. And so I really wanted to see what had the brothers done and to dig as much as I possibly could into the evidence that I could find to document their actions over the past 10 years. Um and to try to give that context to people who are just hearing the brothers constantly declaring that there's no evidence at all.
And yet you point out that the Hartford uh investigation in the UK is just one of many disturbing parts here. In 2014 and 2015, think about how long ago that was. Three women, Hannah Price, Maya Navaro, and Amelia Walker. They went to British police alleging rape and strangulation by Andrew Tate. Now, he was arrested, but then ultimately the case collapsed. Prosecutors declined charges again in 2019. you know, where do you see it? If police and prosecutors had properly investigated those early allegations, understanding where we are then as well in the Me Too uh development, is it possible here that Andrew Tate never becomes the global figure that he is now?
Yeah, I think that's a really important question. I think there's a strong case to make that if those three women had been taken seriously and properly listened to a decade ago that Andrew Tate could have faced justice, could have been held accountable. um and that perhaps other women would not have suffered in the way that they that they have in the years since then. And it is shocking um the way in which that investigation was handled. You know, you had three women who all went to the police and made very similar allegations um that they had been assaulted, raped, strangled by Andrew Tate. Um and that investigation was left to gather dust for four years. U almost nothing was done about it. The police left Andrew Tate's phone lying around the station and didn't download it properly, which meant important evidence became effectively unusable. And meanwhile, Andrew Tate, by his own admission, skipped the country and moved to Romania, a jurisdiction where he he himself has said he is freer to continue behaving towards women in the way that he wishes to behave without facing any action from the authorities. Um and so yeah, that is a really shocking example of the way that a failure to take rape allegations seriously by the police can have very far-reaching consequences.
Yeah. In fact, he says it loudly and proudly just in the last few days, Andrew Tate was sitting on a golf course in just outside of Moscow, I point out, giving an interview in which he dismissed Romanian prosecutors and compared Romania's justice system to Zambia's and argued that if he had actually heard anyone, he wouldn't be a free man today. Listen.
The Romanian state has the same level of judicial integrity as Zambia. So, anything they say we can take with a large pinch of salt. Do I know women? Yes. I'm a full-grown man. Do I know men? Of course. Do I know people? Yes. I'm a famous man. I know people. But if I had ever hurt anybody, especially with how hard they've tried to put me in jail, I wouldn't be sitting here right now.
What strikes you about that?
Well, I think I think what strikes me about that is that Andrew Tate has been saying publicly for years that he moved to Romania specifically because it is a more lenient jurisdiction when it comes to crimes against women. And you know, he's openly said Romania is a corrupt country and I can use that corruption to my own advantage and that's why I want to be here. He's declared for years that he's above the law in Romania. I think it took him very much by surprise when the Romanian authorities did bring this human trafficking case against him. But now, of course, he's turning that argument on its head and saying it's a corrupt country and and shouldn't be taken seriously. The fact is that there's a rape and human trafficking investigation into both the Tate brothers in the United Kingdom as well. They are wanted on 21 combined counts of rape and human trafficking in Britain. and they are not being extradited at the moment from Romania because a Romanian court has ruled they can't be until the Romanian prosecution has run its course. Now, I obtained private messages in which the Tate brothers uh said to each other and to their advisers that they were effectively being protected by Romania from having to go and face justice in Britain. And so, I think Andrew Tate sort of plays the system the way it the way it suits him at any given time. But I think there are very very serious allegations for him to answer in multiple jurisdictions.
What you're saying though is so shocking because despite all the documented evidence, the investigations, and you say there are still these allegations out there, these investigations out there, he's still broadcasting. We just saw him, right? He's still traveling. He's still growing his audience. And I want to point out he is still making money from the likes of Apple and YouTube. You know, what does that tell you about power and impunity online here?
Yeah, it's extraordinary to me that they that brothers are allowed to continue traveling, continue expanding their reach, continue making money given the gravity of the allegations against them. That was a big part of why I wanted to to dig into this investigation in the first place to understand how that could be. Um, I think they have very assiduously courted a number of powerful allies on the right, in particular Elon Musk, who is someone who has come out and declared the case against them bogus and and said that, you know, they're the targets of some sort of liberal smear campaign to distract from actual sex trafficking. Um, and you know, there are other other major allies as well. Donald Trump Jr. is another person. Candace Owens, Tucker Coulson, all of these very prominent figures on the right in America have come out to defend the brothers and to defend their right to continue broadcasting and uh and saying whatever they like. But, you know, when I when I met Andrew Tate at a cigar lounge in Bookucharest this spring, he said to me something which has become quite a familiar argument of his, which is, you know, if I'm a human trafficker, show me a victim. Why are there no victims speaking out? Well, I went out and spoke to more than a dozen women who, you know, say that they they who are who are alleged victims of of the Tate brothers. I gathered accounts from from many more victims in in the form of witness statements and and other documentation. There are a lot of women who feel that they were very seriously victimized by these two men. And they, you know, they they kind of come up with any number of different arguments to try to bat those charges away, but the fact remains the evidence against them is voluminous. And, you know, they uh they have a lot to answer for.
So Heidi, you just mentioned you did sit down with him. I mean, why did you decide to sit down with him? And what most surprised you about your encounter?
Well, I thought it was really important to try to understand uh Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate, his brother, and and understand where they're coming from and their psychology and also to give them a fair chance to to genuinely tell me their side of this. I really wanted to hear them out. And I spent a a huge amount of time with Tristan in particular who who did give me a lot of his time both on the phone and in person and about an hour with Andrew talking to him about all of this. Um, and what really struck me in in in the meeting with Andrew was that he lied very brazenly about the nature of his webcam operation. you know, not only did he tell me that he's not a misogynist and has never said anything uh that designed to denigrate women, which is plainly untrue if you look at his uh many online pronouncements over many years. He also said to me that his webcam business had been closed for 10 years at the point that he was raided by Romanian police, which is demonstrabably totally untrue. That's that's actually, you know, before it even was established. He's saying it was closed before it even began. Um, so you know, I was struck that he could look me straight in the eye and tell me these barefaced lies. Um, and I think you see that happening, you know, in the interview clip that you just played.
And so in sitting down with him though, did did you come to understand why he has had such an influence in the manosphere globally?
I think that he is um quite adept at sort of dawning a different skin suit depending on who he's talking to. So in the conversation with me, he was careful to to be respectful of women and to say that he's not a misogynist and you know he was a very different character than the character you see online. Um I think I got a better understanding of his the way in which he has he's built such an enormous audience online from kind of studying his methodology um over the years. is and I think there was a there was a really crucial moment in 2022 when he devised a really ingenious way of expanding his global following which was to establish something called Hustlers University which was an online school that purported to teach modern wealth creation methods but which actually functioned as a sort of gigantic content factory for Andrew Tate because it had this affiliate this affiliate marketing program in which members could earn commissions by clipping up Andrew Tate's videos and reposting them and so suddenly he had thousands and thousands of fan accounts churning out his content day in day out and pumping it into algorithms that are primed to amplify misogynistic and extreme ideas. And so that summer of 2022, Andrew Tate's content exploded. It was viewed more than 12 billion times on Tik Tok alone that summer. Um, and he just became this global force. And that happened to coincide pretty closely with the human trafficking investigation. He was arrested at the end of that year. Um, and so I think that kind of fed into why there were so many uh there were so many figures on the right who were prepared to stand up and say that he was being targeted by kind of political
Heidi I I I only we only have about a minute left. Uh, and in that time could you really put the focus for us on the women the victims that you have met because they have been harassed, threatened, discredited. Do they have a hope that the Tates uh will finally uh be accountable?
Well, I think there are a lot of women who showed an extraordinary amount of courage in trying to bring Andrew and Tristan Tate's actions to the attention of the authorities. There are a group of four women in the United Kingdom who are bringing a civil case against Andrew Tate for for rape and sexual assault and they have been a real driving force in holding the authorities here to account and making sure that this investigation stays on the agenda. There are also women who have very bravely testified to the Romanian authorities and are strongly continuing to seek justice there. And I think it's so important that those women's voices are heard. There are there are a community of women in multiple different countries describing an extremely similar pattern of conduct, grooming, coercion, extremely similar sexual assaults on the part of Andrew and Trist and Tate. And I think their voices need to be heard.
You certainly have distilled uh their uh suffering quite frankly in in a very disturbing uh way which brings a whole new light to this case. Heidi Blake uh we want to thank you for joining the program.
Thank you so much for having