A Trump administration official with a history of advocating for Andrew and Tristan Tate is backing away from his association with the social media influencer brothers facing criminal charges for sex trafficking in the UK — after making a post on X denouncing “politically driven persecutions.”
Paul Ingrassia, the acting general counsel for the U.S. General Services Administration, posted on X on July 19, a day after the brothers were arrested by federal marshals in Miami. “Politically driven prosecutions based on one’s personal beliefs are completely antithetical to a democratic society," he wrote.
Ingrassia’s post did not mention the Tate brothers by name, but his admiration for them and past history with them is well documented. In 2023, Ingrassia posted on X, “Stop the war on masculinity. Stop the war on [Andrew Tate] and [Tristan Tate]. #FreeTate.”
Users on X immediately drew the connection, with one responding to Ingrassia’s July 19 post, “He was charged with RAPE and INDECENT IMAGES OF A CHILD, Paul.”
In a second X post, also on July 19, Ingrassia invoked the due process protections under the U.S. Constitution, again without mentioning the brothers by name.
Ingrassia texted a statement to Raw Story reading: “Mr. Ingrassia has not mentioned the Tate brothers in any of his statements and has had no association with them for years. To suggest otherwise is to indulge in speculation untethered from fact. As an attorney, he takes seriously his duty to uphold the Constitution — including the presumption of innocence and due process for the accused.”
Ingrassia declined to discuss the matter further.
Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ), a MAGA loyalist who has previously worked as a prosecutor, expressed opposition to the U.S. government extraditing the Tate brothers in an X post on Monday that used language strikingly similar to Ingrassia’s legal arguments.
“The U.S. Constitution is the greatest protection in the world for its citizens,” Hamadeh wrote. “The Tate brothers are American citizens, and they deserve full American Constitutional protections — which means innocent until proven guilty. No American court has charged them with a crime despite years of false alarms and innuendos. They’ve been deplatformed, debanked, arrested, and still no convictions — something President Trump has endured for years.” (Contrary to Hamadeh’s assertion, Trump has been convicted of falsifying business records in New York state.)
“There should be no extradition of American citizens when the charges are unclear and political,” Hamadeh continued. “The US government should either charge them with a crime or protect them from reckless court proceedings in the UK and Romania."
Hamadeh offered no evidence to support his claims that the prosecutions are “reckless.” A call to his office for this story went unreturned.
Ingrassia was involved in the Tate brothers’ relocation from Romania, where they were under house arrest on sex trafficking charges, to Florida in early 2025, shortly after Trump returned to the White House.
As reported by Heidi Blake for The New Yorker, Romanian prosecutors lifted travel restrictions on the Tate brothers in February 2025 after U.S. special presidential envoy Richard Grenell raised their case with the Romanian foreign minister at the Munich Security Conference.
When the brothers arrived in Florida by private plane, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials under the Department of Homeland Security seized their electronic devices. Ingrassia reportedly intervened on the White House’s behalf to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security returned the brothers’ devices.
In 2023, while Trump was gearing up his presidential campaign, Andrew Tate had appeared in a profanity-laced video promising, “If Trump wins, I’ll move to America. That’s how back we are. We’ll make it the global seat of power again.” Ingrassia reshared the video, writing, “[Andrew Tate] can book his flight for Tuesday, November, 5, 2024, because we’re going to make this happen!”
Ingrassia served as White House liaison to the Department of Justice and then to the Department of Homeland Security. In May 2025, Trump nominated him to lead the Office of the Special Counsel, but his nomination foundered in the Senate following revelations about his ties to Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, allegations of sexual harassment and racist texts. Last October, Ingrassia’s nomination to the Office of the Special Counsel was withdrawn, but he was later assigned to the General Services Administration, where he now serves as acting general counsel.
Less than a week before their arrests, the Tate brothers reportedly attended a party in Washington, D.C. hosted by Paolo Zampolli, a State Department official who serves as special envoy of the president of the United States of America for Global Partnerships.
Zampolli appeared as a guest on Andrew Tate’s podcast, where he called him a “true patriot,” in May. Tate reciprocated by praising Zampolli’s business acumen.
A former modeling agent, Zampolli is known for having introduced Melania Trump to Donald Trump. Zampolli frequently crossed paths with the late financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2000s, and one of the models employed by Zampolli went on to work for Epstein as an assistant, while another alleged that Epstein sexually assaulted her.