A former pageant queen has claimed that Donald Trump “jumped” on her “grabbing her body everywhere” in an incident at a New York hotel in 1993.
Beatrice Keul, 53, told the Daily Mail that the former president and current Republican nominee invited her up to his suite at the Plaza Hotel for a “private talk”.
At 6’1” tall, she believes it was only because of her height and strength that she could fight him off.
The Trump campaign told the Mail the allegations are “fake”.
Keul worked at a Swiss bank in Zurich and modeled part-time when she won second place in the Miss Switzerland 1992 pageant going on to participate in the final round of the Miss Europe competition in Istanbul that same year.
She then received an invitation from the Donald J Trump American Dream Pageant to compete, including an all-expenses-paid trip to New York and Atlantic City.
Keul came forward with the story now after finding all the documentation concerning her trip to New York in a box as she prepared to move. They had sat there for 30 years after she had returned “very upset” by the incident.
She described originally being excited by the prospect of the trip and that Trump’s name was attached, telling the Mail: “Trump, as a brand, was quite something at that time. You could be blinded by all that. I didn’t know it’s a jungle there.”
Keul flew to Atlantic City via John F Kennedy Airport in New York on November 14, 1993. After the competition, contestants were bused to the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.
She met Trump, then 47, as he talked to the other contestants, saying it was nice to finally meet her: “He was definitely excited,” she said, recalling that he mispronounced her name as “Cool” and they had a photo taken together.
“We talked for so long that everybody was staring at us. A good 10 minutes if not 15. I couldn’t believe he was so fond of me.”
After lunch, a staff member approached her to say that Trump, who owned the hotel at the time, wanted a private meeting and she was taken upstairs to a suite.
“I was confident, but I went with closed eyes,” she recalled. “When I entered, he jumped on me. I just had time to turn. I was not prepared. I tried to do what I could to get rid of him.”
“He kissed me on the lips and on the neck. He tried to lift my dress. He was grabbing and touching my body everywhere he could,” Keul said.
“I’m very tall, that’s what helped me a lot. I’m 185cm [6’1’] with a good 5-7cm shoes [2-3’]. I think my size saved me,” she said and explained she got him to slow down by saying something like “let’s talk first” in her recollection to the Mail.
Trump, she claimed, then held her hand, kissed her, and asked if she wanted to drink something and sit down.
“It was a bit Jekyll and Hyde,” she said. “I didn’t know how to react.”
Wondering how she could extricate herself from the situation, Keul decided to be nice and they talked for about 30 minutes with the real estate mogul asking if she wanted to stay in the US, offering help getting a place on a New York University course.
She agreed to see him again as she didn’t want any trouble. “He asked me if I’m mad, I said no. I had to find something diplomatic.”
“I remember he was holding me, kissing me, he said ‘I’ll see you later’,” Keul told the Mail. “When you are with sick people you have to stay calm, because if you are not calm something very bad can happen. I tried to be as normal as possible and lie in my replies.”
Keul recalled that it was the beginning of the pageant and it would have been conspicuous to leave then and she would have to explain why.
“I was in a foreign country. I was scared that I could not go home, or I couldn’t come back. I was scared of everything, and when you’re scared, you say whatever it takes to save yourself.”
Keul told her story to the Mail before former Sports Illustrated model Stacey Williams claimed last week she had been groped by Trump when taken to meet him by her then-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein in 1993.
The former Swiss pageant queen also recalls Epstein being close to Trump and attending pageant events where he tried to convince her to come to Mar-a-Lago — insisting he would pay for everything.
“He was very explicit. He said, ‘You know I can take care of you. We organize many parties with Don. I take care of everything.’ He was really insisting,” recalled Keul.
“He said he’s organizing the party at Mar-a-Lago with Don. It was clear he was some kind of henchman … I thought, if he wants me that badly to come, he wants me to do something for that.”
Keul’s story is backed up by her friend Pascal Claivaz, a Swiss writer, who said she told him about the incident around 2004.
The encounter also bears a resemblance to the accounts of other women who have accused Trump of sexual impropriety — most notably E Jean Carroll, whom Trump was found liable for sexually abusing in a department store in New York in the mid-1990s.
The Trump campaign’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Mail that Keul’s accusations were “false” and were planted to distract from accusations against Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff.
“Fake allegations like this are a disservice to women who are truly victims of assault, like the women in Doug Emhoff’s past,” Levitt said.
