Trump and DeSantis plead ignorance on Andrew Tate’s flight to Florida
Florida’s two most politically powerful residents said they had no explanation for why Andrew and Tristan Tate landed in Fort Lauderdale Thursday after being released from Romania while facing human trafficking charges.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said he had no involvement with the abrupt return of the controversial, right-wing influencers, and President Trump told reporters he knew nothing about their release.
“I read about it through the media,” DeSantis said during a press event. “Clearly the federal government has jurisdiction whether they want to rebuff his entry into the United States.”
Asked in the Oval Office if his administration pressured the Romanian government to release the Tates, Trump said he was in the dark.
“I just know nothing about it,” the president said. “We’ll check it out, we’ll let you know.”
The twin denials raise questions about who facilitated the Tates’ re-entry to the U.S. and why.
The Tate brothers, known for their combative online presence and self-proclaimed misogynistic views, had been under investigation in Romania since December 2022 on charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal group to sexually exploit women.
While they were not being held in government custody, the brothers were prohibited from leaving Romania as part of the ongoing criminal investigation until Thursday, when Romania’s anti-organized crime agency approved a request to modify the travel ban.
Hours later, the Tates were on a private jet from Bucharest to Fort Lauderdale.
The Financial Times reported earlier this month that the Trump administration was pushing Romanian authorities to return the Tate brothers’ U.S. passports and allow them to leave the country. Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu told Romanian TV that Richard Grenell, Trump’s special envoy, had brought up the Tate brothers during an informal discussion at the Munich Security Conference.
Tate urged his 10 million social media followers to vote for Trump ahead of the 2024 election and later invoked sexist language to celebrate his victory, saying Trump kept “evil war mongering she witches out of office.”
DeSantis said Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier was looking at what jurisdiction the state of Florida may have in the matter, but notably added that “Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct.”
“I don’t know how it came to this,” DeSantis said.
Addressing reporters at the airport, Andrew Tate, who holds dual citizenship in the U.K. and United States, invoked a U.S. judicial axiom of being innocent until proven guilty.
“I think my brother and I are largely misunderstood. There’s a lot of opinions about us, a lot of things that go around about us on the internet. We’ve yet to be convicted of any crime in our lives ever,” he told reporters, according to a video posted by Sky News.
But Tate’s claim that the Romanian case against him was dismissed in December isn’t true.
While a Bucharest court ruled that the first criminal case could not proceed due to legal and procedural irregularities, the charges against the Tates remain in effect.
What’s unclear is how further cases will proceed now that the Tates are back on American soil.
Sitting alongside Trump in the Oval Office, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed more urgency about the Tates than his counterpart.
“There’s an English element here, so obviously it’s important justice is done, and human trafficking is obviously, to my mind, a security risk,” he said as Trump looked on.
This story was originally published February 27, 2025 at 5:08 PM.
