Pageant official resigns after Miss Calif. flap

A day after Donald Trump allowed Miss California Carrie Prejean to keep her crown following a semi-nude photo scandal, Shanna Moakler resigned from her post at the organization.

“Since the press conference yesterday, I had a chance to think about what has taken place, and I feel that at this time it is in my best interest to resign from the Miss California USA organization,” Moakler said in a statment released to Access Hollywood. Up until her resignation, Moakler held the co-executive director post at the Miss California USA organization.

Moakler also said that she had lost faith in the organization following yesterday’s press conference.

“I cannot with a clear conscience move forward supporting and promoting the Miss Universe organization when I no longer believe in it, or the contracts I signed committing myself as a youth,” Moakler’s statement continued. “I want to be a role model for young woman [sic] with high hopes of pageantry, but now feel it more important to be a role model for my children. I am sorry and hope I have not let any young supporters down but wish them the best of luck in fulfilling their dreams.”

When contacted by Access Hollywood, the Trump organization was unaware that Moakler had resigned.

Despite racy photos of beauty queen Carrie Prejean that surfaced on TheDirty.com last week and new topless photos that surfaced on TMZ.com on Tuesday, which showed her posing without a shirt, pageant owner Donald Trump allowed the beauty queen to retain her title.

“We’ve reviewed the pictures very carefully ... we are in the 21st century and I talked about relevance and the pageants have been updated tremendously. And Carrie is a model, she’s a very successful model, we have determined — and we have the absolute right under the contract — we have determined that the pictures taken are fine,” Trump said at Tuesday’s press conference.

“So, we’ve made a determination that everything we’ve seen to this date that she’s done, some were risque, but again, we’re in the 21st century, so we’ve made a determination that the pictures taken were acceptable they were fine in many cases. They were lovely pictures and in some cases they were modeling pictures, so I think that’s very important to understand.”

Video   Miss California blames photographer May 13: TODAY’s Matt Lauer talks to Trump and Prejean about the controversy over racy pictures and views on gay marriage. Today show

Trump also addressed the strife between the co-directors of the Miss California USA, Shanna Moakler and Keith Lewis, and Prejean.

“The last thing … is we have Keith and Shanna from the pageant, the directors of the Miss California pageant. I met them today for the first time … they were having some miscommunication with Carrie. The communication, I believe, is totally solved. They are really getting along very well,” Trump said on Tuesday. “They’ve been meeting for hours in my office and I really think that they are and have developed a relationship that they didn’t have before. Carrie will remain Miss California. She, I believe will do a fantastic job.

“And I think that Carrie will go down as somebody that Shanna and Keith will be very proud of in the end,” he added.

When contacted by Access Hollywood, the Trump organization was unaware that Moakler had resigned.

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