‘Election-interfering fiction’: Trump sues pollster and newspaper over Kamala Harris report that showed ‘false’ poll lead before voting started

Inset: The Des Moines Register

Inset: The Des Moines Register’s coverage of the J. Ann Selzer poll named in Donald Trump’s lawsuit (Trump v. Selzer complaint). Background: Donald Trump (NBC News).

Veteran Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer on Friday implored a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed against her and The Des Moines Register newspaper by Donald Trump over a poll published ahead of the 2024 presidential election that predicted Vice President Kamala Harris had a slight lead in the race.

In a 30-page filing, Selzer’s attorneys excoriate Trump’s lawsuit, arguing that Trump’s theory of liability “would eviscerate the First Amendment” and is “both stupid and very likely unconstitutional.”

In a poll released three days before the election, Selzer had predicted that Harris had about a three-point lead over then-candidate Trump. Trump went on to win the state by about 13 points. The lawsuit, initially filed in December 2024 under an Iowa law against “consumer fraud,” accuses Selzer and the Register of being in cahoots with “cohorts in the Democrat Party” who “hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.”

It seeks damages and a court order to prevent the newspaper from publishing any future “deceptive polls” that might “poison the electorate.”

Selzer is represented in the litigation by attorney Robert Corn-Revere of the nonprofit free speech advocacy group the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

In a 30-page motion seeking to dismiss the case, Selzer vehemently asserts that Trump’s lawsuit is an affront to constitutionally protected free speech.

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