A congressional Democrat has doubled down on her demand that first son Barron Trump appear before the House oversight committee — saying he’s a “full-blown adult” who should have to testify about rape suspects Andrew and Tristan Tate.
“There have long been ties between the Tates and the Trump family,” Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona told MeidasTouch podcaster Ben Meiselas. “It is reported that Barron Trump played a key role in facilitating, especially during the 2024 campaign, the relationship between the Tate brothers and the campaign.”
“And, you know, Andrew Tate was very publicly supportive of Donald Trump,” she added during the conversation posted online Saturday.
Ansari also concurred when Meiselas called Barron Trump, who turned 20 in March, a “grown-up,” notwithstanding how Meiselas described the president as likening his youngest offspring to first lady Melania Trump’s “little boy.”
“Absolutely, I could not agree more,” Ansari said. “Barron Trump is an adult. He is a full-blown adult, and he is very influential in the Trump White House orbit.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a Sunday inquiry from The Independent.
Last week, Ansari called on House oversight committee Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, to “swiftly open an investigation into the Tate brothers’ coordination and extensive relationships with members of the president’s orbit, including his son, Barron Trump.”
Her move came after 39-year-old Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist and leading influencer in the online “manosphere,” and brother Tristan Tate, 38, were arrested July 18 in Miami.
The U.S. Marshals Service took them into custody as British prosecutors said they were seeking to have them extradited to face charges of raping and trafficking women from 2010 to 2017.
The Tates deny any wrongdoing, and a lawyer representing them in the U.S. has called the U.K. charges “filth and slander,” and predicted they “will walk free” following American court proceedings.
The brothers were both ordered held without bond following a July 20 court hearing, but a series of first-person statements were posted on Andrew Tate’s X account Sunday.
“England invented a MeToo from 20 years ago and I now languish in an American maximum security jail as a political prisoner. A shame,” one statement said.
Another said, “There is no question of my innocence, especially amongst the British public, who have lost all faith in their judicial system and sent me thousands of letters.”
It also compared Andrew Tate to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Donald Trump, saying they’d both “suffered the same” and asking “why are ancient MeToo allegations so against politically influential people taken seriously? Especially when they only appear once convenient.”
The Tates, who hold dual British and American citizenship, were previously arrested in Romania in 2022 on charges of human trafficking and forming a criminal organization to sexually exploit women.
The charges remain pending, but the brothers were allowed to leave the country in February 2025 and flew to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on a private jet.
The BBC reported that their travel ban was lifted after several high-level White House officials took an interest in their case but that it was unclear what role, if any, the Trump administration played in the decision.
Trump has said he didn’t know anything about the matter, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that the president wouldn’t prevent the Tates from being extradited to Britain.
