Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve likely heard that notorious playboy-influencer and Romanian mafia-associate Andrew Tate has been feeling the heat, as his prosecution continues to take turns for the worse, and his “War Room” affiliates are being rounded up by Romanian law enforcement.
There’s one thing I can’t help but be curious about during such high-profile crime cases like these - who was on the periphery? Where was Tate most promoted and why? Might we notice anything if we take a closer look?
Patrick Bet-David seems like an interesting place to start, the increasingly popular ex-military former Morgan Stanley financial advisor and founder of PHP, a controversial FMO-style life insurance marketing company (which has since been sold), as well as the YouTube-based media platform “Valuetainment”, which rose to fame closing the book on the history of the Italian-American mob.
Bet-David has undoubtedly been one of the most vocal commentators regarding the Tate criminal case, having even visited the brothers in Romania during their house arrest, and at one point bringing the scandalized brothers’ legal counsel on the show to speak in their defense.
As a lifelong mob history aficionado I was curious about this mysterious half Russian-Armenian entrepreneur with extensive GOP connections (crazy as they may be) who just became a part-owner of the Yankees (and recently made a 100 million dollar business proposition to Tucker Carlson)
If nothing more, both his meteoric rise and origin story seem rather unusual in context.
I mean just to begin with, what are we really to make of PBD’s longstanding association with former Colombo family capo Michael Franzese, who famously earned his reputation partnering with the Russian mafia selling bootleg gasoline with Jewish Soviet/Eastern-bloc gangsters from Brighton Beach?
As Franzese tells it, it’s a fairly legendary saga all-in-all, which tracks the downfall of La Cosa Nostra in America and ultimately ends in his incarceration (as well as the murder of his Romanian-born Russian-Jewish mafia partner Mikhail Markowitz by gunshot in the spring of 1989).
On the surface his was a modern day redemption tale, which has launched an unusual television/movie/influencer career, notably including a film executive-produced by Sean Hannity and his very own crime-themed NFT collection.
(Check out one of their many video collaborations if you are curious about this story)
But after taking some time to observe this strange mob-adjacent media network, it struck me as odd that they have yet to ask serious questions about the criminal dynasty that really makes headlines in our day - the one with its shared legacy entwined to confederate international oligarchs who seem to be very concerned with politics in Israel, Russia and the US .
So is organized crime just a bygone fairytale, a story locked away in the past? Why is all this so absent from the conversation? I mean they are in Florida after all, it’s hard to imagine a more relevant/current topic for their audience. And don’t they have a Russian-Jewish cohost as well?
(I also noticed that Bet-David’s former PHP business partner Oscar De La Hoya had been sexually blackmailed for $1,000,000 by Russian gangsters, a ransom which was paid by his completely naked lawyer in a swimming pool to avoid potential wiretaps. And would you believe that it wasn’t the only time either?
Also what about the Russian-backed Israeli narcotics traffickers Valuetainment’s second-favorite wiseguy Sam Gravano ended up working for?)
Likewise consider the rest of their uniquely impressive guest list - featuring the likes of Meyer Lansky’s former attorney, Jewish white-collar criminal mastermind Jordan Belfort, Simon Wiesenthal’s favorite old Zionist gangster and creepy Israeli spies… might there be a reason this network isn’t discussing one of the most pressing public issues in our time?
It also seemed interesting that PBD’s star reformed-informer mafioso Franzese was questioned in the Mueller investigation, about his other former Russian-Jewish mob partner David Bogatin, who had family in the intelligence services.
…And a brother who was in the continuous employ of the Russian mob’s Israeli-Ukrainian superstar-construct Semion Mogilevich’s international crime outfit back in the 90’s.
(Which itself suggests how the intelligence world might blend into adjacent crime syndicates in general - Curious that Tate’s father was a disgruntled Russian-speaking NSA transcriber who was edged out of the US intelligence community, and that Tate hired a former Romanian secret police officer to run his security. But I digress.)
If we take a step back, this already feels rather remarkable. For starters, what are we to make of the centrally bizarre coincidence that so many people in this sphere were for years existentially entangled with hardcore Russian/Eastern European mafiosos?
Such organizations and their legacies have only grown in power/legitimacy - are we so certain that despite everything, these stories are all just forgotten and consigned to history?
(On that note, who were these “Chechnyans”, and “Albanians” who Tate claims were going to murder him back in Luton before he entered the sex trafficking business? Definitely sounded serious - what was that all about?)
Call me old-fashioned… but these strike me as very unusual gentlemen with a whole lot of strange proximity to the world of foreign organized crime. I mean, what else can we even say? It’s not like any of this is a secret - it’s a matter of public record at this point.
So why are we listening to these people about our politics again? The more you think about it, it’s almost surreal.
(And I won’t even start with all the bizarre stuff about Scientology or the links to evangelical end-times prophecy cultists and Christian sectarians accused of child abuse and pyramid schemes. Things already seem weird enough.)
Hard not to have some reasonably grounded concern about what’s going on here. After all, we are currently engaged in a war by proxy with Russia in Ukraine, and the overall threat posed by organized crime/foreign influence is concerning to say the least. Surely this is now a worry many Americans share.
And if you might be wondering, this cast of characters has been using the same Kremlin-style talking points since the beginning of the war. PBD’s guests are some hard-working Putin apologists, that’s for sure. Why just ask renowned director Oliver Stone!
Or check out Tate with his typical line below.
(And be sure to watch the original Sinews of War investigation as well if you still have your doubts regarding Tate himself. It’s not pretty.)
If we think about the big picture, these deep criminal histories and patterns of behavior seem seriously unsettling. Of course we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, and if there is an honest or otherwise sensible explanation here we should be willing to accept it - but after all that’s occurred with Tate, how could we not be concerned about the people surrounding him?
For instance, Franzese’s life has been a front row seat to a “changing of the guard” between the Italian and the Russian-Jewish mob. Isn’t it strange that a man who never in his career as an online celebrity advocated for someone’s legal defense has now released his 6th video arguing for the Tates?
(As an aside, the fact that certain figures in the American hardline right have endorsed Tate at all is unbelievable in a sense. Aren’t these the same people who’ve been up in arms about foreign alignment for the better part of 80 years?)
Who really knows what’s happening with the Tate brothers. Not like such networks would run cover for their own or anything (or that once you get involved with them it’s usually for good).
Not like the Russians would have an active interest in supporting criminal mafias in Eastern Europe. Or that NATO and Romanian counter-espionage efforts have been running overtime to rid their territory of undue Russian influence, Romania having expelled Russian diplomats (potential or actual spies) from her embassies just this last month.
Now of course no one can have justice rendered before their trial - but given the Tate brothers’ well-documented history, and the fact that countless people and families are consuming their content online, is it so wrong for concerned American citizens to worry that many of the people in their sphere may not be exactly who they claim they are either?
All of this is to say, in these uncertain times, at what point should we start being more careful about who we trust?
(Update: FBI whistleblower Johnathan Buma has alleged that Rudy Giuliani, long time friend of the network in question, was himself compromised by a Russian-aligned Ukrainian oligarch. Buma’s statement to the Senate Judiciary was first posted on Arthuriana. Pavel Fuchs, who reportedly paid Giuliani $300,000 in cash for a lobbying effort, was also involved with the purchase of frozen funds belonging to former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich.)
