Controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate, who face charges in Romania, including human trafficking and sexual intercourse with a minor, have arrived in the United States after a travel ban on them was lifted, according to their spokesperson and Romanian prosecutors.
A spokesperson for the brothers, Mateea Petrescu, said the two landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, around midday, The Associated Press reported.
Ahead of their arrival, Joseph McBride, the Tate brothers’ U.S.-based attorney, told NBC News on Thursday morning, he would not comment on whether the State Department or the White House was involved in lifting the travel ban. A Trump official also declined to comment on the Tate brothers’ arrival in the United States.
“Our position is that Andrew and Tristan have long been targets of lawfare,” McBride said. “They have maintained their innocence, arguing the accusations against them are defamatory and false.”
When asked about the Tate brothers entering the state, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said it was under the federal government’s jurisdiction “whether they want to rebuff his entry into the United States.”
The Tate brothers, who are dual U.S.-British citizens, were reported by Romanian media to have taken a private plane from the country to the U.S. early Thursday.
The brothers left Romania while under criminal investigation over accusations of having formed an organized criminal group, in addition to human trafficking, the trafficking of minors, sex with a minor and money laundering. They have denied any wrongdoing.
Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism, or DIICOT, said in a statement Thursday that prosecutors had approved a “request to modify the obligation preventing the defendants from leaving Romania,” but it said judicial control measures remained in place, The Associated Press reported. The agency did not expand on who had made the request.
The Tate brothers would still be expected to appear before judicial authorities if summoned and were warned that violating their obligations could “result in judicial control being replaced with a stricter deprivation of liberty measure,” DIICOT said.
Andrew Tate, 38, and Tristan Tate, 36, were arrested near Bucharest, Romania’s capital, in 2022 along with two Romanian women, with all four indicted by Romanian prosecutors last year.
The Bucharest Tribunal ruled in April that a trial could move forward but did not set a date, with all four denying the allegations against them.
The Tate brothers’ departure to the U.S. comes after an American woman who says the siblings attempted to recruit her into a webcam sex trafficking ring filed a countersuit against them this month, claiming they had defamed her after she gave a testimony to Romanian authorities.
Jane Doe’s countersuit came after the Tate brothers sued her for defamation in 2023, accusing her and another woman of giving Romanian authorities fabricated evidence and conspiring to defraud and falsely imprison them.
Her suit was the first U.S.-based lawsuit against the Tate brothers, who are both former kickboxers.
McBride, the Tate brothers’ lawyer, said a Zoom hearing was expected to be held on Thursday in a defamation suit the brothers filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, but added that that was a coincidence and unrelated to their travel.
When asked about why Romanian authorities gave the brothers permission to leave, McBride added that their defamation case against the government “put a crack in” the charges against them, pointing to “corruption” in Romania.
Matthew Jury, a lawyer who has represented British women who have filed criminal complaints against Andrew Tate in the U.K., said reports that the Trump administration had played a role in the Tate brothers being allowed to leave Romania for the U.S. were “equal parts disgusting and dismaying.”
NBC News was not able to independently verify whether Washington played any role in the development. The Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
McBride declined to comment on whether the White House was involved in the Tate Brothers’ departure from Romania.
“There is clear evidence to support the allegations against Tate that he is one of the world’s worst human traffickers and serial rapists,” Jury said Thursday of Andrew Tate in a post on X. But, he added: “Any suggestion that the Tates will now face justice in Romania is fanciful.”
The lawyer called on the British government to step in and act to see the Tate brothers extradited to the U.K. to face charges of “human trafficking and rape they are alleged to have committed in this jurisdiction.”
The British government did not immediately comment on the developments.
