- A rumor spread in October 2026 that U.S. President Donald Trump raped a former Miss Switzerland contestant, Béatrice Keul, during a beauty pageant in 1993.
- The claim surfaced after Democrats on the House Committee on the Judiciary published a report featuring a detailed account that describes Trump allegedly attacking and raping Keul in a room of the Plaza Hotel, New York City, in 1993, with the apparent complicity of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Keul was in the U.S. for a pageant Trump had organized. The report says Keul was 24 years old at the time.
- This is not the first time Keul has discussed the incident. British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail first reported it in October 2024, though that article says she was able to fight him off. In September 2026, Keul provided an account of what she described as “sexual assault” on Unheard: True Crime in their Own Words, a podcast hosted by content creator and survivor advocate Justin Shepherd.
- White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said via email, “None of these allegations are true.” Bis accused Democrats of attempting to distract people in the U.S. from the “surging Republican momentum” Trump has led ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. (As of this writing, several forecasters predict the Democrats will win a majority in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate.)
- It has not been possible to independently verify the claim that Trump raped Keul. Snopes will update this report if and when additional information surfaces. We have reached out to Keul for further details and are awaiting a response.
A rumor spread in October that a former Miss Switzerland contestant, Béatrice Keul, accused U.S. President Donald Trump of raping her during a beauty pageant in the 1990s.
The claim circulated on Facebook, Threads, Instagram and Reddit, with one X post reading, “Now we find out that Trump allegedly raped Miss Switzerland in 1993.”
Several Snopes readers emailed us to inquire about the rumor.
An October 2026 report by Democrats on the House Committee on the Judiciary recounts Keul’s allegation, in which she claimed Trump raped her at the Plaza Hotel, New York City, in 1993, as she visited the U.S. for a beauty pageant the now-president had organized.
Responding to our inquiries, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said via email, “None of these allegations are true.” Bis said the accusation was Democrats attempting to distract people in the U.S. from the “surging Republican momentum” Trump has led ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. (Several forecasters predict the Democratic Party will win a majority in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate.)
It has not been possible to independently verify the claim that Trump raped Keul. Snopes has contacted her for further details. We will update this report if she responds.
Keul’s allegations
This is not the first time Keul has made allegations against Trump. British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail first reported them in October 2024, though the article says she had been able to fight him off when he allegedly assaulted her.
In September 2026, Keul offered an account of what she described as a “sexual assault” on Unheard: True Crime in their Own Words, a podcast hosted by content creator and survivor advocate Justin Shepherd (around the 30:02 mark in the video).
During the time she spent in the U.S. for the pageant, Keul reportedly told the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee that she met late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (Paragraph 3, PDF Page 17), who was then “close friends” with Trump, per the report (Paragraph 5, PDF Page 3).
In her email to Snopes, White House spokesperson Bis said, “The President kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club at Mar-a-Lago because he was a creep, and he has been fully exonerated of anything related to Epstein.” It is unclear when Trump and Epstein fell out, but it was after 2002, when Trump described the convicted sex trafficker as a “terrific guy,” as Snopes has previously reported.
Per the Democrats’ report (PDF Page 18), Keul described how one of Trump’s aides took her to a room at the Plaza Hotel, where Trump was waiting for her. He then allegedly attacked her as soon as she walked into the room:
Later that day, Donald Trump’s representative invited Keul to go upstairs at the Plaza Hotel to meet with Trump. Believing this meeting to be a lucky break for the purpose of furthering her career and education, Keul accompanied Trump’s representative upstairs. He ushered her into the suite, where upon entering, Trump reportedly grabbed Keul from behind and forcibly raped her; in the process, tearing her dress and causing bleeding and bruising on multiple parts of her body. Keul described the rape as “brutal.”
The report says (PDF Page 3) Keul’s account is one of several “united by time, place, and the distinct factual similarities in how Trump and Epstein pursued, manipulated, and abused these women.”
That section of the document also claims Trump and Epstein had conspired to commit a series of rapes, sexual assaults and trafficking “between 1992 and 1997 in New York City and Palm Beach, at a time when Trump and Epstein were ‘close friends’ and participated in a shadowy subculture organized around young female modeling.”
For further reading, Snopes has covered several allegations of rape and sexual assault against Trump, including an unproven claim that a U.S. senator saw a video of the president raping a child.
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