Male influencer Andrew Tate and his brother, facing sex crime inquiries, arrive in Florida from Romania

Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate, the British American online influencers, arrived in Florida on Thursday morning after a Romanian court ruled they could leave the country, a development that raised questions about whether the Trump administration played a role in their sudden departure.

The brothers, who had been barred from leaving Romania for more than two years over criminal investigations, boarded a private jet in Romania early Thursday local time, said Joseph McBride, their lawyer in the United States. They landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport shortly after 11 a.m. and left in an SUV with heavy security around 12:30 p.m.

The Tate brothers have openly aligned themselves with the Trump administration in recent weeks. Romanian officials said the United States had not put pressure on them, and McBride, who has long lobbied U.S. lawmakers on their behalf, said he could not comment on whether U.S. officials had used their power to free the men.

[Read more: How male influencers such as Andrew Tate are shaping Latter-day Saint men’s views of masculinity — for better or worse.]

[And listen: This week’s “Mormon Land” podcast also focused on the issue.]

Andrew Tate refused to answer questions from reporters Thursday about President Donald Trump’s involvement. Still, McBride said earlier Thursday, “do the math. These guys are on the plane.”

During a meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain at the White House on Thursday, Trump said he knew nothing about the Tates being released from Romania. Starmer recognized that “there’s an English element here” and said that “it’s important that justice is done, and human trafficking is obviously, to my mind, a security risk,” adding that he’ll look further into the matter.

Andrew Tate said he and his brother are “largely misunderstood.”

“We’ve yet to be convicted of any crime in our lives, ever,” he said outside the airport. “We have no criminal record anywhere on the planet, ever.”

The Tates have repeatedly denied the allegations against them. They successfully appealed an indictment in a Bucharest court, which found in December that the case did not meet the requirements for a trial, sending it back to prosecutors.

“A prosecutor recently decided that because we have no active indictment in court, to let us go and return,” Andrew Tate said. “This is a democratic society; you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, as my brother and I are.”

The travel restrictions on the Tate brothers were lifted Wednesday, according to Romanian authorities. In response to questions about the brothers, Romanian prosecutors said in a news release that they were still pursuing criminal investigations against two British American citizens. They did not name the people, but said they had been allowed to leave Romania and had to “appear before judicial authorities whenever summoned.”

Romania’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said U.S. officials had not intervened in their case. “In Romania, the judiciary is independent and is the sole authority empowered to make decisions in an ongoing investigation or trial,” the ministry said in a statement.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

McBride had advocated on behalf of the brothers among lawmakers on Capitol Hill going back as far as 2023, he said. He had developed contacts in Congress largely through his legal representation of several people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But his advocacy for the Tates did not appear to gain much purchase until Trump was reelected.

In recent weeks, the brothers have expressed their support for Trump. “The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back,” Andrew Tate said on social platform X this month.

For more than two years, the Tate brothers have faced a protracted legal battle with prosecutors in Romania, who charged them with human trafficking and forming an organized crime group. According to Romanian prosecutors, the brothers misled several women into believing that they wanted a relationship with them. The women were instead housed in a compound near Bucharest and forced to appear in online pornographic videos, prosecutors said.

Since the Bucharest court sent the case back in December, prosecutors in Romania have said they are investigating the brothers over other accusations of human trafficking and money laundering.

Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer known for his sexist views, has promoted a brand of masculinity tied to lavish displays of wealth. According to an archived page on his website that has since been removed, Tate described a method he said made him rich.

“My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she’s quality, get her to fall in love with me to where she’d do anything I say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together,” he said. He claimed that he had worked with “over 75 girls” on the site.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Thursday said the Tates were not welcome in his state and that he had no involvement in the plans for the Tates to travel there.

“Our attorney general, James Uthmeier, is looking at what state hooks and jurisdiction we may have to be able to deal with this,” DeSantis said at a news conference. “But the reality is no, Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct in the air, and I don’t know how it came to this.”

Uthmeier said on social media that his office was conducting a “preliminary inquiry” into the Tate brothers.

“Florida has zero tolerance for human trafficking and violence against women,” he wrote. “If any of these alleged crimes trigger Florida jurisdiction, we will hold them accountable.”

The Financial Times reported this month that U.S. officials had urged Romania to lift travel restrictions on the brothers. Richard Grenell, a special envoy for the United States and a close ally of Trump, mentioned the case with the country’s foreign minister, Emil Hurezeanu, at the Munich Security Conference this month, according to the report.

Jenny Gross and Remy Tumin contributed reporting. David C. Adams reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Matei Barbulescu reported from Bucharest, Romania.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.