Joseph McBride’s clients are accused of raping women and coercing them into sex work.Mother Jones illustration; Joe Raedle/Getty
It seems extremely unlikely that accused rapists and sex traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate will be released from Miami’s federal detention center, where they’re being held. For one thing, the brothers are awaiting extradition to the United Kingdom to face sprawling charges related to sex trafficking, rape, assault, and indecent images of a child, and the Trump administration has declined to step in. For another, as government prosecutors laid out in a filing opposing pre-trial release earlier this week, there is something of a flight risk, given that Andrew Tate previously used an alter-ego Twitter account to brag about being, in his words, “above the law” and “hard to kill,” as well as having of four or five passports and nine drivers’ licenses in several names. “I have had warrants out for my arrest and travelled freely,” @OfWudan, an account linked to Tate, tweeted in 2019. “I am smarter than you. I am Steven Seagal. I am above the law.” (Tristan Tate, according to the prosecutors’ filing, is similarly alleged by UK authorities to have a Mexican passport bearing his photo and date of birth, but with the name “Vladimir Scorpius,” a James Bond villain.)
The mountain impeding the Tates’ pretrial release, then, is extremely high, but Joseph McBride is determined to climb it. McBride, a New York attorney representing both brothers, has launched an aggressive, quixotic, and highly public quest to free the Tates and promote a positive image of the two men. He’s using several tools to do so, including podcasting (both on his own, entitled Judgment Day, and through appearances on others’ shows), intense media engagement, a rally outside the jail, verbose tweeting, and, most unusually of all, a flood of AI-generated images released on X and Instagram.
The faked images typically show the Tates manfully bearing their suffering in the clink: meditating in orange jumpsuits together atop a bunk, for instance, or dually staring at the viewer from inside a filthy cell. He also shared a striking image of the Tates sitting around a table with prominent men from across the historical spectrum—from Joe Rogan back through George Washington, with his tricorn hat looming oddly behind his head—accompanied by a lengthy caption on the importance of masculinity. It begins with a claim that the “manosphere built Western society.”
McBride, who previously represented a series of January 6 defendants, describes himself on social media as a “traditional Catholic Warrior” and a “Defender of American Patriots, The Constitution, and Andrew & Tristan Tate.” (Besides the extradition case, he’s also representing the Tates in a Florida defamation lawsuit they are waging against one of their accusers.) McBride has cast the cases against the brothers as an attack by “the system”—a term that the Tates also use—due to their purported advocacy for men.
“His message is male empowerment,” McBride tweeted in May, referring to Andrew Tate. “The system cannot control strong men. That is why he is public enemy number one. Escape the Matrix.” This week, McBride told podcaster Michael Malice that he fears the Tates will be “Epsteined” in jail, by which he meant murdered.
“Strategically, a picture is worth 1,000 words,” claims the Tates’ lawyer.
In an email, McBride told me the allegations in the government’s filing opposing the Tates’ release are false. “On Monday, the government filed a brief that drips with falsehood from every page. Our reply will be filed on or before August 21, and it will answer that brief lie by lie and line by line, on paper, with documents,” he wrote. “Every claim in the government’s filing,” he added, “will be tested against the record.”
McBride was less eager to discuss the AI images of the Tates he’s been posting—there have been at least nine since July—and declined to disclose what image generating tool was used to construct the memes. “This is my favorite question,” he told me. “Two men who are convicted of nothing, on any continent, in any court, are sitting in solitary confinement at the request of a foreign government that has not even filed its extradition papers, and Mother Jones wants to know what software their lawyer uses to make pictures. You found the scandal, Ms. Merlan. It is not the unconvicted men in the SHU. It is the memes. When you are ready to ask a question about the Constitution, you know how to find me.”
I did not ask a question about the Constitution—I couldn’t think of a relevant one at the moment—but in a followup email, McBride clarified that the AI-generated images are part of his overall plan to represent the Tates. “Strategically, a picture is worth 1,000 words,” he told me.
McBride also said that despite the previous tweets from the @OfWudan account, Andrew Tate does not consider himself to be above the law. “No one is above the law, and no one is beneath its protection,” he wrote. “Andrew Tate is convicted of nothing and charged with no American crime. The government is quoting tweets in a federal court filing. That tells you everything you need to know about the strength of its case.”
The Tates are, as New Yorker reporter Heidi Blake laid out in a lengthy June investigation, intensely politically connected, with fans in Trump’s administration and family, including Donald Trump Jr. and Barron Trump. Blake’s piece describes McBride himself as “a star in MAGA circles, dining at Mar-a-Lago and befriending Donald Trump, Jr.” (The two were photographed together at a 2022 New York Young Republican Club gala.)
Yet those political connections haven’t served them particularly well lately; in his emails, McBride decried the “gutless pussies” in Congress, as he put it, who have privately voiced fandom for the Tates but haven’t spoken up in their defense.
“Many members of Congress have, at different places and times, privately expressed their disapproval of the allegations against Andrew and Tristan Tate,” McBride wrote. “They have also asked for social media advice, messages for their kids, and have asked to take photos with the brothers. Andrew and Tristan give of their time freely. There was never an ask or expectation of anything in return. I am simply voicing my displeasure with their predictable silence regarding speaking out against injustice during times where courage is needed.”
For now, the Tates remain in the Miami facility’s special housing unit, separate from the general population. Andrew’s X account continues to proclaim the brothers’ innocence and protest their jail conditions. Neither McBride nor anyone else connected with the Tates have disclosed how he’s tweeting from jail, or who else may be posting on his behalf. The government, meanwhile, has said in their filings that the Tates are being held in the SHU for their own protection, that conditions at the jail are reasonable, and that the brothers have been accorded things other SHU inmates are not, including joint meetings with their lawyers and access to the commissary. To drive the point home, the prosecutors included a receipt detailing the brothers’ purchases of ramen, coffee, Doritos, and Twix.
A hearing on their pretrial release motion is scheduled for August 27.
