[News] [USA] Miss Pennsylvania USA pushes back at Donald Trump after pageant lawsuit threat

[Stephanie Stevens]

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PA, USA


Miss Pennsylvania USA pushes back at Donald Trump after pageant lawsuit threat

Friday, June 08, 2012

By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Cranberry resident Sheena Monnin said the threat of a lawsuit by
Donald Trump won't make her back off her charge the Miss USA pageant
was rigged.

"I just want the truth to be known," Ms. Monnin, 27, said in an
interview on NBC's "Today" this morning.

Ms. Monnin competed in the pageant in Las Vegas last weekend. She
resigned Monday as Miss Pennsylvania USA and charged on her Facebook
page that the pageant was "fraudulent, lacking in morals."

Mr. Trump, who co-owns the Miss USA Pageant with NBC, threatened
Wednesday on "Today" to sue Ms. Monnin if she didn't withdraw her
charge by today. An internal investigation indicated the charge is
false, he said.

Ms. Monnin is a "sore loser" who never had a chance of finishing in
the top 16, Mr. Trump said.

After the top 16 had been announced, another contestant, Miss Florida
USA, told her she'd seen in an open folder a list of the names of the
top five, Ms. Monnin said. The women Miss Florida USA named did indeed
become the final five contestants.

"The names were called out in the order they were on the list," Ms.
Monnin said on NBC this morning. "That's too coincidental to be true."

Miss Florida USA was just joking, pageant officials said. Ms. Monnin
wasn't buying that.

"I've had many years of psychological training," she said. "I know
body language. I know when someone is serious."

Pageant officials said the real reason Ms. Monnin resigned is because
she's unhappy with Mr. Trump's decision two months ago to permit
transgender women to compete.

She doesn't agree with that decision, Ms. Monnin said this morning,
but that isn't the reason she resigned.


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