STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Is Lindsey Halligan, the lawyer chosen by President Trump to be the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, the same woman made infamous by a viral video of her answer to a question in a 2007 beauty pageant? No, that's not true: Lauren Caitlin Upton is the woman who, as Miss South Carolina Teen USA, gave a rambling reply to a question onstage at the Miss Teen USA contest in 2007. Halligan competed in the Miss Colorado USA pageant in 2009 and 2010.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) shared on X on September 24, 2025. It featured the video of Upton's viral clip next to Halligan answering a reporter's question at the White House. The caption read:
Donald Trump is going to have one of his former beauty pageant contestants indict his former FBI Director and the current NY Attorney General. I'm sure this is going to go well for her.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: screenshot of X.com by Lead Stories)
Halligan's nomination to be the federal government's top prosecutor in the judicial district adjacent to the nation's capital has been criticized because of her lack of prosecutorial experience. She has been a lawyer for 12 years, but has focused on representing insurance companies in disputes with insured property owners before Donald Trump added her to his personal legal team in 2022.
She was a semi-finalist in 2009 and the third runner-up in the Miss Colorado USA (archived here) competitions, which is a preliminary event to the Miss USA pageant that Trump owned at the time. There is no evidence she knew Trump before meeting him at one of his golf clubs in 2021, according to the Washington Post.
The video of Upton was used by JD Vance during the 2024 presidential campaign to mock Vice President Kamala Harris.
BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview. pic.twitter.com/c6nfcJrFJy
-- JD Vance (@JDVance) August 29, 2024
Updates:
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2025-09-25T19:10:32Z 2025-09-25T19:10:32Z CORRECTION: Updated to add the last name of Lauren Caitlin Upton, which was omitted from earlier version of this fact check.
