Beatrice Keul, a former Miss Switzerland finalist, told House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff that Donald Trump raped her in a Plaza Hotel suite in Manhattan in November 1993, according to their 26 October report.

Keul first went public in October 2024, when she said in newspaper interviews that Trump kissed and groped her in the same suite and that she got away by persuading him to talk. The staff report says she disclosed a completed rape, and details she had held back, over several weeks of discussions with committee staff.

Asked on 26 October whether she was accusing Trump of a completed rape for the first time, Keul told the Swiss newspaper Blick: "Publicly, yes." She said that several outlets Trump had sued would not take the risk, that some advised her to start gently and that parts of her statement had been censored.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said that "none of these allegations" in the report are true, and said Trump had been cleared of anything related to Epstein. A Justice Department spokesperson said the report was "nothing more than a last-ditch effort by House Judiciary Democrats to mislead the public".

The accounts

In her October 2024 interviews, Keul said Trump jumped on her as she entered the suite, kissed her on the lips and neck and tried to lift her dress. She said her height, 1.85 metres, and her strength let her fight him off, and that he slowed down when she asked to talk first.

In a June 2026 interview she said the attack was violent and that she screamed for help, and that Trump warned her afterwards that bad things could happen if she spoke out. In December 2025 she hinted at an attempted rape and said she was holding back details because of anonymous threats.

On 27 October she told French television that Trump attacked her with extreme brutality at the door of the suite and that she screamed, struggled and prayed to survive. She said the Democratic committee members were the only body with weight against Trump and that she trusted them to secure justice and transparency.

Pascal Claivaz, a Swiss writer and friend, said she told him about the episode around 2004 in a 2024 interview. A journalist friend she confided in years before 2024 confirmed her account to the Swiss public broadcaster SRF on 27 October.

The pageant

Jill Harth, who recruited models for Trump's contests, brought Keul into the Donald J. Trump American Dream Pageant, which ran in Atlantic City and New York in November 1993 for contestants aged 16 to 22, according to the report. Keul, then a Zurich bank employee who modelled part time, was 24 by the report's figure. The contestants were taken by bus from Atlantic City to the Plaza in Manhattan, which Trump owned at the time, she said in 2024.

Trump introduced himself and greeted her by name as Ms Keul at a press luncheon at the Plaza and spent at least 15 minutes with her, the report says. He said a friend named Paolo would arrange her U.S. visa and that he would personally see to her admission to New York University. The authors identify Paolo as Paolo Zampolli, a modelling agent who became Trump's special envoy for global partnerships and was removed from the post on 15 October 2026.

A Trump representative later invited Keul upstairs, and she went believing the meeting could help her career and studies. Inside the suite, she told staff, Trump grabbed her from behind and raped her, tearing her dress and leaving her bleeding and bruised. He then sat her on the edge of the bed, repeated the visa and university promises, made her promise to keep quiet and told her "the show must go on", the report says.

Her passport had been taken on arrival, and she finished the contest in a daze because she feared that asking for it back before the final would signal to Trump that something was wrong, the report says. Back in Switzerland she turned down a second Trump-sponsored pageant in Hawaii several weeks later, and Trump telephoned her months afterwards to repeat the visa and university offers, which she refused.

Epstein

Jeffrey Epstein approached Keul at the luncheon as soon as Trump moved away, introduced himself as Don's best friend and talked to her for at least 10 minutes while Trump watched from across the room, she told staff. He offered to cover flights and accommodation for a party at Mar-a-Lago and said: "You know I can take care of you. We organize many parties with Don," according to the report.

Keul gave the same account of Epstein in a December 2025 newspaper interview, saying he treated her as prey. The report's authors wrote that Epstein used promises of places at New York University to recruit young women, and that Keul described Trump's university offer in 2024, before that pattern was publicly reported.

The authors also set her account beside Harth's 1997 lawsuit against Trump, which alleged that around 20 November 1993, the last day of the same pageant, Trump demanded access to a Czech contestant he called a "sex object" and for years telephoned models offering career help in return for sexual favours. The report reproduces photographs of Keul with Trump at the 1993 event and cites accounts from others present at the pageant, the committee Democrats said.

The report and the responses

Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who is ranking member of the committee, released the staff report, titled "'We Have Certain Things in Common, Jeffrey'", eight days before the 3 November midterm elections. Minority staff wrote it and no member signed it, so it carries the Democratic staff's conclusions rather than a finding of the committee rather than a committee finding.

The report sets out accounts involving 11 women, five of whom accuse Trump of rape or sexual assault in Epstein's company or presence, and asks Attorney General Todd Blanche to appoint an independent special counsel. The other four accusations had already been made public through interviews or FBI interview summaries released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Zampolli, reached on 26 October, denied any role in Epstein's recruitment of models and said: "Jeffrey Epstein was my competitor and rival." Bis also said that Trump had expelled Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.

Keul told SRF she is politically neutral and said she was preparing class actions against Trump with other women who accuse him or Epstein of abuse. She said the report had set off a flood of media requests.

The law

New York set a five-year limit on prosecutions for first-degree rape until 2006, when the legislature abolished it only for offences that were not already time-barred on 23 June 2006, the Appellate Division's Fourth Department held in People v Burroughs in 2013. The same ruling cited the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Stogner v California, which bars legislatures from reviving prosecutions that have already expired.

A first-degree rape in November 1993 would have passed the five-year mark in November 1998 unless prosecutors could prove that one of the tolling provisions in New York's criminal procedure law applied, a burden the Fourth Department placed on the prosecution. Civil claims had a separate route: the Adult Survivors Act opened a one-year window from 24 November 2022 to 23 November 2023 for adults to sue over sexual assaults of any age, and Keul went public 11 months after it closed.

The committee staff's notes of their interviews with Keul would fix the date her account to them first included rape. The Plaza's November 1993 guest registers and the pageant's schedule would show whether Trump used a suite on the luncheon date and who escorted contestants upstairs, records Raskin asked Blanche on 26 October to put before an independent special counsel.