A former beauty pageant contestant who previously said she rebuffed Donald Trump’s sexual advances in 1993 now alleges that the president raped her during that encounter, according to a report released Monday, October 26, by Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
In a series of interviews with Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, Beatrice Keul said Trump raped her “brutally” in a hotel room in Atlantic City. The two had earlier met in the company of Jeffrey Epstein, then a member of Trump’s circle of friends.
First Account Described Unwanted Advances
Keul, a Swiss national, first came forward in 2024 with allegations of unwanted advances, telling the Daily Mail that Trump “jumped” her before she managed to persuade him to stop. She was 24 at the time.
In the interviews that produced the report, Keul said she met Trump in November 1993 at a beauty pageant. According to her account, he promised to help her obtain a visa and gain admission to New York University. She later met Epstein, who introduced himself as “Don’s best friend.” She was subsequently invited to a room upstairs, where Trump allegedly assaulted her.
Parallels With Other Accusers
“According to the reported statements, Trump grabbed Keul from behind and raped her; during the assault he tore her dress and caused bleeding as well as bruises on several parts of her body,” the Democratic report states. Keul described the rape as “brutal.” After the assault, according to her testimony, Trump sat her on the edge of the bed, repeated his promises to help her obtain a visa and get into NYU, and made her promise to stay silent, saying: “[T]he show must go on.”
The Democratic report does not reproduce transcripts of the interviews with Keul. Nor does it explain why she changed her account.
The document notes similarities between Keul’s statements and those of several other accusers, including E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump sexually assaulted her in 1995 or 1996. In May 2023, a jury found that Trump had committed sexual abuse against Carroll. The judge determined that her rape allegation was “substantially true.”
Report Points to Epstein Ties
Democrats argue that Keul’s account also aligns with other testimony about the president’s conduct within his friendship with one of the worst sexual predators in U.S. history. “A growing body of evidence shows that Donald Trump took an active part in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women in the mid- and late 1990s,” the report states.
The document alleges that the Trump administration unlawfully blocked the full release of Justice Department files concerning Epstein in order to protect the president. Epstein took his own life in 2020 while awaiting federal charges. Congress ordered last fall that those documents be made public.
Epstein Fallout Could Haunt Trump After Midterms
“Complicity by authorities in a cover-up operation to protect traffickers and rapists constitutes a criminal obstruction of justice and an intolerable assault on a free society,” the report states. “The precise extent of the U.S. president’s involvement in a criminal sex-trafficking network is, inevitably, a question of the highest importance to Congress and the American people.”
The report could therefore become a central piece of evidence in any new impeachment proceedings against Trump that Democrats might be tempted to launch in the event of a midterm landslide.
The White House said none of the allegations in the report were substantiated. “This ‘report’ is nothing more than a desperate attempt by deranged Democrats to divert Americans’ attention from the growing Republican momentum driven by President Trump’s historic achievements,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in an email. “The president kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club because he was a disgusting individual, and he has been fully cleared of any involvement in Epstein-related matters.”
Report Also Targets Attorney General
Beyond the allegations against Trump, the Democratic report says Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former lawyer for the president, “may have committed criminal obstruction of justice as part of a mission to protect Trump.” Lawmakers cite in particular an unusual interview he conducted last year in prison with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice, shortly before she was transferred to another facility.
“The women who survived Epstein’s conduct deserve to be heard, Congress must have all the files the law requires to be released, and an independent special prosecutor must investigate Epstein’s accomplices as well as the Justice Department’s cover-up operation, and ensure that state and foreign prosecutors have the evidence they need to advance justice,” Jamie Raskin, the report’s author, said in a statement.
