Yet another woman has come forward to accuse Donald Trump of groping her, bringing the total number of sexual misconduct allegations against the GOP candidate up to 28.
Speaking to The Daily Mail, Swiss former beauty pageant contestant Beatrice Keul said that Trump “jumped” on her when she met him in 1993.
Keul was runner-up in Miss Switzerland and participated in Miss Europe in 1992, she told the Mail, which evidently put her on Trump’s radar. The businessman offered her an all-expenses-paid trip to New York and New Jersey for his Donald J. Trump American Dream Pageant in November of the following year, she recalled. During an event at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, Keul told the Mail, Trump approached her.
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“We talked for so long that everybody was staring at us,” she said. “A good 10 minutes if not 15. I couldn’t believe he was so fond of me.”
Later, when one of Trump’s employees came up to her and said Trump wanted a “private meeting,” as the Mail puts it, Keul agreed and accompanied him to one of the “big suites” upstairs.
She said she thought he just “wanted to talk,” but as soon as she entered the room, she continued, “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,” she added. “He was grabbing and touching my body everywhere he could.”
Keul believes her height—she‘s 6′1″—was the only thing that allowed her to escape Trump’s grasp. She said she de-escalated the situation by asking if they could “talk first,” at which point Trump allegedly reverted to his best behavior. They proceeded to chat for the next half-hour, she said, during which Trump offered to help bring her to the U.S. as a student.
“He asked me to agree to see him again. I said yes, because I didn‘t want trouble. He asked me if I‘m mad, I said no. I had to find something diplomatic,” she said. “It was the beginning of the pageant and I had an entire week to stay there.”
What’s more, Keul added, “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 shared documentation of the trip—photos, plane tickets, invitation, commemorative plaque—with the Mail, saying she only decided to come forward after finding it all while preparing for a move.
But while dozens of women have come forward with similar claims in the lead-up to previous election cycles, Keul is only the second to do so this time around: Earlier this month, ex-model Stacey Williams also accused Trump of groping her in 1993, in what she believed was a “twisted game” with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump denied those allegations as “unequivocally false,” just as he has denied every other round of misconduct allegations he’s faced—up to and including those of writer E. Jean Carroll, whose sexual assault complaints against Trump a New York court has twice found credible. The Daily Beast has contacted the Trump campaign for comment on Keul’s allegations.
