What did the 2016 BuzzFeed investigation of Miss Teen USA contestants allege in detail?
Executive summary
The 2016 BuzzFeed News investigation reported that multiple former contestants from the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant said Donald Trump entered their backstage dressing room while some contestants — reportedly as young as 15 — were changing, and that he made comments suggesting he had seen them undress before; BuzzFeed identified at least four (later five) women who described such incidents [1][2]. The reporting also noted many former contestants who did not recall the event and recorded denials from Trump’s campaign, leaving the allegations as contested firsthand accounts rather than legally adjudicated findings [1][2].
1. The core allegation: Trump walked into teen dressing rooms
BuzzFeed’s report collected firsthand recollections from several women who said that, during the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant, Trump entered the dressing room area while contestants were changing and did not immediately leave despite their partial undress; multiple outlets summarizing BuzzFeed described “four” or “nearly half a dozen” former contestants making that claim [1][3][4]. One named source, Mariah Billado (former Miss Vermont Teen USA), is quoted describing a moment of panic where she “put on my dress really quick” after seeing a man in the room and remembered Trump saying, “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before,” an anecdote repeated across reporting about the BuzzFeed piece [3][4][2].
2. Specifics reported: ages, timing, and number of accounts
The BuzzFeed investigation emphasized that some of the contestants who later spoke to reporters were minors at the time — commonly reported as around 15 years old — and that the accounts clustered around the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant [3][4]. Reporting variably cited four to five women alleging such intrusions, while noting that BuzzFeed reached out to many more contestants: eleven of those contacted said they did not recall Trump entering the dressing room, illustrating that the published allegations came from a subset of former participants [3][4][2].
3. Contradictions, campaign denials, and alternative perspectives
Trump’s campaign rejected the BuzzFeed reporting as “completely false and politically motivated” and argued other individuals present had disproved the account, though fact-checkers and news outlets noted that the campaign offered no publicly verifiable evidence disproving the specific claims [1]. Several former contestants told reporters the episode had been exaggerated or that chaperones had warned contestants to cover up, providing a counterweight to the women who described feeling exposed or alarmed [5][4]. News coverage uniformly presents the story as contested testimonial evidence rather than settled fact because of those conflicting memories [1][4].
4. Broader context cited by reporting: Howard Stern remarks and pattern claims
News accounts tied the BuzzFeed allegations to Trump’s long-publicized 2005 Howard Stern comments in which he described going backstage at pageants and seeing contestants undressed, noting that Stern’s remarks concerned adult pageants (Miss USA/Miss Universe) and are separate from the Miss Teen USA claims but often cited together in media narratives [3][4][6]. Coverage and fact-checking outlets highlighted that while Stern’s anecdotes suggest a permissive backstage culture and Trump’s comfort with entering dressing areas, they do not by themselves verify the specific Miss Teen USA incidents reported by former contestants [4][7].
5. What the BuzzFeed investigation did not establish and reporting limitations
BuzzFeed published multiple firsthand accounts but did not produce corroborating contemporaneous documentation or third‑party adjudication that proved the incidents in court or via independent records, and major outlets and fact-checkers emphasize that the story remains allegation-based with conflicting witness memories; reporting does not show formal legal action was pursued or that law-enforcement findings confirmed the claims [1][4][5]. Readers should note those limitations: the investigation assembled testimonial evidence from several women and contrasted it with denials and non-recollections from others, leaving the public record as a contested set of allegations rather than an established legal finding [1][2].