Right-wing influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan arrived in Florida Thursday after leaving Romania earlier in the day, their lawyer told CNN. The move came after prosecutors lifted travel restrictions on the pair leaving the country.
The Tate brothers, who are dual US and UK nationals, had been banned from leaving Romania after being arrested in 2022 and charged with rape, human trafficking, money laundering and starting an organized crime group. They have denied all wrongdoing.
Ioan Gliga, their lawyer, said the brothers left Romania Thursday morning and are flying to Florida.
“They no longer have a travel ban… The prosecutor, at the request of the lawyers, modified the content of the obligations previously imposed,” Gliga said.
The decision by Romanian authorities to lift the ban came after the US reportedly put pressure on Bucharest to ease restrictions on Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist who has a huge online following and has become a cause célèbre on the American right.
Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported, citing sources, that President Donald Trump’s administration had pressed Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on Tate, first in a phone call, then when Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell met Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
Hurezeanu later confirmed that he had discussed the Tate brothers with US officials, but said he had not been pressured to lift restrictions on them. A spokesperson for Romania’s Foreign Ministry told CNN on Thursday there was “no pressure, no solicitations” in the discussions.
In a statement Thursday, Romanian prosecutors stressed that only the travel restrictions had been lifted, while “all other obligations remain in effect, including the requirement to appear before judicial authorities whenever summoned.”
Gliga, the lawyer, told CNN that the Tate brothers will return to Romania in less than a month for their next court appearance on March 24.
The decision to lift travel restrictions has been broadly criticized by politicians in Romania.
Elena Lasconi, a candidate for the presidential election in May, said she is “outraged” by the decision and said authorities must explain whether their decision was made under external pressure.
“We cannot accept that Romania’s image is tarnished by impunity and defiance,” Lasconi said. “Otherwise, what message are we sending to the world? That anyone with money and influence can get away with it in Romania?”
The decision to come to Florida has also drawn the attention of Governor Ron DeSantis.
“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. We were not involved, we were not notified. I found out through the media that this was something that was happening,” DeSantis said Thursday at Camp Blanding.
‘Re-traumatized’
As well as charges in Romania, Tate is also facing civil action in the United Kingdom from four women who allege they were raped and coercively controlled by Tate before he gained his huge online following. Tate denies the allegations.
In a statement shared with CNN, the women said they are “in disbelief and feel re-traumatized” by reports that he has been allowed to leave Romania, and said they feared Tate would use his newfound freedom to “continue to spread a violent, misogynistic doctrine around the world.”
“There is now a major risk that the criminal prosecution for his alleged crimes in Romania will not proceed,” they said.
Matthew Jury, the lawyer representing the alleged victims, said that “any suggestion that the Tates will now face justice in Romania is fanciful.”
Jury said that Bucharest had “embarrassed itself” in lifting the travel restrictions and that he found the decision “disgusting and dismaying.”
Later Thursday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to meet Trump for talks in Washington, DC. Jury said he hopes Starmer uses the meeting “to raise this issue” on behalf of the alleged British victims.
Tate – who shot to internet fame in recent years, racking up billions of views on TikTok with diatribes about male dominance, female submission and wealth – was banned from almost all social media platforms before Trump’s now adviser Elon Musk took over X and reinstated his account.
In Romania, the first criminal case against Tate and his brother failed in December when a Bucharest court decided not to start the trial, citing flaws in the indictment.
A Romanian court lifted a house arrest order against Tate in January, replacing it with a lighter preventative measure. In October, a court ruled he should get back luxury cars worth about €4 million ($4.43 million) that were seized by prosecutors, pending the investigations.
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