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Footage Catches Andrew Tate Trying to Subtly Pass Off His Phone to Guard During Rape, Sex Trafficking Arrest

footage-catches-andrew-tate-trying-to-subtly-pass-off-his-phone-to-guard-during-rape,-sex-trafficking-arrest
Footage Catches Andrew Tate Trying to Subtly Pass Off His Phone to Guard During Rape, Sex Trafficking Arrest

Commentary

Andrew Tate is pictured inside The Court of Appeal in Bucharest, Romania, on Dec. 10, 2024.

Andrew Tate is pictured inside The Court of Appeal in Bucharest, Romania, on Dec. 10, 2024. (Daniel Mihailescu – AFP / Getty Images)

 By C. Douglas Golden  July 22, 2026 at 6:46am

Former kickboxer and famous porn-monger Andrew Tate has nothing to hide. Except for the stuff that he very obviously wants to hide.

We’re not talking about just whatever skeletons Tate might have in his closet. No, the social media celeb thought that he could basically get his bodyguard to take his phone during his arrest on Saturday in Florida.

Tate and his brother Tristan were taken into custody by U.S. marshals outside a bareknuckle boxing event that the brothers were supposed to host at the James L. Knight Center in Miami. The arrest was made at the behest of Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service, according to the New York Post, for new counts of rape, sex trafficking, and indecent images of a child.

This is in addition to old charges of rape, trafficking, and prostitution in the United Kingdom and also charges in Romania.

Video of the arrest quickly hit the internet. Aside from Andrew Tate’s bizarre outfit, which appears to have been purchased from the petites section of the tackiest store in all of Miami, the footage went viral because of Andrew Tate’s clumsy attempt to hand off his smartphone to someone in his entourage.

Andrew Tate gives phone away during arrest

🔗: https://t.co/uN36uMMfyO pic.twitter.com/XZArO9kmyl

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) July 19, 2026

Even though he’s anti-woke, is Tate a danger to boys and young men?

Note to Mr. Tate: If you know that you’re under suspicion for sex trafficking in several countries where you operated webcam businesses and could be rearrested at any moment, and there’s evidence on that phone you don’t want authorities to see, it’s probably a wise idea to not carry it in the first place.

But then, what would Tate be if wisdom ever factored into the equation?

It’s difficult, at this point, to write a thinkpiece about Andrew Tate and his contributions to the so-called “manosphere” because thinkpieces involve thought and Tate is a man who is famous for his conspicuous lack of it. Or perhaps the man himself could summarize it best with this nugget on the necessity for literature:

WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language that some viewers will find offensive.

Andrew Tate on reading books: “My brain is far too advanced. I’m too smart to read.” pic.twitter.com/544OvYkBV3

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) February 7, 2026

There are some who call the Tate case selective prosecution; he’s become a cause célèbre in certain sections of the right — indeed from people I hold some amount of respect for — due to the fact that he and his brother are transgressive figures who attempt to impart a political undercurrent to their madness.

But then, the same could be said of the Kray twins in Swinging London. That didn’t make them any better as people or any less guilty of crimes far worse than what the Tate brothers are accused of, but they were embraced by the leftist counterculture in the 1960s the same way that the conservative counterculture sometimes embraces the Tates today:

“Welcome to the States, boys.”

Dana White, President and CEO of UFC and a board member of META, warmly greets Andrew and Tristan Tate. pic.twitter.com/MEf6t7LayV

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 8, 2025

That being said, they haven’t been found guilty of any of these things, but Tate’s case is somewhat reminiscent of gentleman rapper Corey Miller, who went by the moniker C-Murder and ended up getting charged with, um, murder.

With C-Murder, there were the usual protestations made that this was all a set-up and that he would be exonerated. Even after he was found guilty, his case was taken up by celebrity boosters like Kim Kardashian and the true-crime (or true-innocence) podcasting class, which maintains that he was totally innocent of the 2002 shooting he was convicted of.

For all I know, maybe the guy is innocent. But, I mean, he picked the name C-Murder. Not C-Embezzlement or C-FARA Violations, but he went straight to one of the few crimes which will reliably get you life behind bars and one of two I can think of that will get you the death penalty. (Treason, the other, isn’t tried that often.)

Similarly, Tate is a man who has been charged with sex trafficking and who once bragged about offering a “PhD” — or “Pimpin’ Hoes Degree” — through his “Hustlers University” online program, which itself was allegedly a get-rich-quick multilevel marketing scam.

Andrew Tate sells a course called the “Pimping Hoes Degree,” where he is training other men to be trafficking pimps. He is still producing more human traffickers to this day.

Watch this human trafficking expert look at Tate’s PHD and say it is textbook human trafficking… pic.twitter.com/g8ImzwZHbU

— Gadget (@Gadget440) August 26, 2024

That sounds a lot like a man teaching other men to pimp based on his experiences pimping. Which, you know, is one of the things he’s been charged with. Just saying.

Similarly, while I don’t know many people who would want the feds to search their phones, I know of very few people who’d dimwittedly hand them off to their entourage on camera. That, again, looks suspiciously like someone who’s used to flouting society’s norms in an illegal manner, watching those norms catch up to him, and figuring out too late how discretion works for the criminal set.

But again, I am going by my C-Murder hunch-radar here. He’s a man with a mediocre career in kickboxing and a career in reality TV that was cut short by controversies, who’s made most of his money off of selling females on webcam sessions or teaching other desperate men how to sell females on webcam sessions, inter alia.

And he wants to convince us that he’s managed to become fabulously rich by just Telling It Like It Is™ to young men — which is to say that women are trash and the property of men, that men need to start acting that way, and that it’s time to put down that book and start getting your hustle game on.

This passes as anti-woke because it’s unabashedly masculinist. But it’s not anti-wokeness born out of any sort of bedrock morality. It’s born out of Andrew Tate’s desire to satisfy Andrew Tate’s lusts of the flesh.

And, at the last minute, he seemed to realize that there was ample evidence of that fact on his phone. Not only do the police know that now, but everybody on the internet knows it. Great work.

Granted, young men can’t always see that distinction. They’re just sick of being told they’re garbage, they find a guy who says they should live like kings, and they like that. Who wouldn’t? And that’s where the trap snaps shut and they get sucked into a lust for other lusts, just as Mr. Tate allegedly has.

This, of course, is entirely separate from procedural or targeting concerns in the cases the Tates face, especially given the sorry state of the British justice system.

That said, they’re being charged with things that would be crimes anywhere in the civilized world, and we have an extradition treaty with the United Kingdom. As for all the boys and young men who follow Tate and are reading this, do yourself a huge favor: Drop this sinful buffoon like Tate’s friend dropped his phone.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).

Birthplace

Morristown, New Jersey

Education

Catholic University of America

Languages Spoken

English, Spanish

Topics of Expertise

American Politics, World Politics, Culture

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