Trump sues Des Moines Register and top pollster for survey released the day before the election

Donald Trump is suing the Des Moines Register, its top pollster J. Ann Selzer, her firm, and the newspaper’s parent group Gannett, alleging news coverage of Selzer’s poll showing Kamala Harris with a surprising lead was used to fraudulently boost his rival in the final days of the 2024 election.

The lawsuit accuses the newspaper of “brazen election interference” and violations of consumer protections — his latest line of attack against media outlets he disagrees with as he prepares to wage war against a critical press when he returns to the White House.

His lawsuit was filed in Iowa’s Polk County late Monday, days after ABC reached a $15 settlement with the president-elect in his defamation case against the network and its star anchor George Stephanopoulos.

The settlement marked a rare lawsuit victory for the former president, who has previously unsuccessfully sued The New York Times and CNN, and is currently trying to claim $10 billion in damages from CBS.

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Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump also repeatedly threatened to revoke network broadcasting licenses for airing critical coverage, and he called on Congress to “kill” bipartisan legislation to safeguard press freedom.

His Iowa lawsuit, first reported by Fox News Digital, invokes the state’s Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deception when advertising or selling merchandise.

Selzer’s poll anticipated Harris leading Trump by three points in the state. He eventually won Iowa by 13 points, reflecting a 16-point error in Selzer’s poll, which in previous elections was considered a gold standard.

The lawsuit, without any evidence, accuses Selzer and the Des Moines Register of creating a “false narrative of inevitability” for Trump’s Democratic opponent to boost her chances of winning.

“Instead, the November 5 Election was a monumental victory for President Trump in both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote, an overwhelming mandate for his America First principles, and the consignment of the radical socialist agenda to the dustbin of history,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.

Sezler’s poll in “deep-red Iowa was not reality, it was election-interfering fiction,” they added.

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In the weeks after Election Day, Selzer announced her retirement “to other ventures and opportunities.”

Trump’s attorneys claimed she “retired in disgrace from polling less than two weeks after this embarrassing rout.”

“Left-wing pollsters have attempted to influence electoral outcomes through manipulated polls that have unacceptable error rates and are not grounded in widely accepted polling methodologies,” they added.

“We have acknowledged that the Selzer/Des Moines Register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa by releasing the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer,” Des Moines Register spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton said in a statement.

“We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit,” she added.

Election law expert Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, said he does not expect the lawsuit “to go anywhere.”

Trump, however, is heading back to the White House embroiled in several lawsuits and legal threats against a free press.

Days before Election Day, Trump sued CBS News for $10 billion, alleging that the network deceptively edited an interview with Harris to unlawfully influence the election.

His attorneys also made legal threats to The Daily Beast, The New York Times and Penguin Random House, and his campaign filed a six-page complaint to the Federal Election Commission alleging that The Washington Post made illegal in-kind contributions to Harris’s campaign by promoting stories about the vice president.