Joshua Kolb is one of the exceptional lawyers working to protect our democracy. He’s been involved, most recently, in the Kennedy Center case, just the latest in a spate of important cases and critical work. He is the Senior Counsel and Manager of Rapid Legal Response at Democracy Defenders Action. So when Joshua made time to write a piece about the Tate Brothers for Slate Magazine, I knew it was well worth following up on.
It’s not just Jeffrey Epstein. Tolerance for sexual abuse and violence against women goes much deeper. The Tates are symptomatic of that, and like Epstein, they have ties to people in Trump’s inner circle. I asked Joshua to join us tonight to explain what he’d learned and what we need to know about this situation, which seems to have slipped out of the headlines.
A little refresher: In July, we learned that British prosecutors wanted to extradite Andrew and Tristan Tate from the U.S. on rape and sex trafficking charges. The brothers were known to be the subject of ongoing proceedings in Romania on human trafficking and sexual abuse charges. They deny any criminal wrongdoing, but “have boasted about recruiting women to make lucrative sexual content, and have sold courses teaching young men how to follow in their footsteps.” The brothers earned tens of millions of dollars doing this.
British prosecutors authorized 38 new charges against the brothers, in addition to 21 existing ones, including allegations of rape, sex trafficking, assault, and distributing indecent images of a child and asked the United States to send the brothers to Britain to face those charges. We discussed the extradition request at the time, which led to the brothers' arrests in Miami.
The curious part of the story is how the brothers ended up in the United States despite having pending charges in Romania. In December 2025, The New York Times reported that although forbidden to leave Romania, Andrew Tate messaged a friend, “I had word from The Trump admin that theyre on top of things.” The following month, Romania “lifted the travel restrictions, a move that Romania’s prime minister thought would appease the Trump administration.” After Deputy U.S. Marshals took the brothers into custody, a federal judge found they were flight risks and ordered them detained while the extradition proceeding moved forward. Currently, they’re being held in federal detention in Miami.
It looks bad at the surface level. Joshua joins us tonight for a deep dive into the situation. It’s essential reading.
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