Judge Tosses Trump’s ‘Election Interference’ Lawsuit Against Newspaper and Pollster
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
An Iowa judge dismissed a lawsuit by President Donald Trump, who sought damages from the Des Moines Register and its former pollster, Ann Selzer.
Selzer, a former longtime pollster for the paper, conducted a presidential poll days before the 2024 election showing Trump trailing then-Vice President Kamala Harris in Iowa, 47% to 44%. The survey turned out to be wildly errant, as Trump won the state 56% to 43%.
The month after Trump won the election, he sued the Register, Selzer, and the paper’s parent company, citing “election interference.”
“There was a perfectly good reason nobody saw this coming: because a three-point lead for Harris in deep-red Iowa was not reality,” the complaint said. “It was election-interfering fiction.”
Iowa District Judge Scott J. Beattie saw the matter differently.
“At its core, the plaintiffs’ petition seeks to stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability,” Beattie wrote.
Beattie went further, stating that even if he accepted Trump’s claims of intentional “election interference,” he would still side with the defendants.
“Even with this assumption, each of the three counts still fails,” he wrote, stating that the lawsuit failed to demonstrate fraud or deception by the defendants.
Selzer was represented in the case by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE.
“We’re pleased that the court recognized what we’ve said all along: This lawsuit was laughable from the beginning and never should have been brought,” reacted FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere, who led Selzer’s defense. “The First Amendment does not allow anyone in government, least of all the president, to punish people under the banner of ‘fake news.’ That may work for him as a campaign slogan, but it is not a thing in the law.”
Trump has escalated his war on the press since his first term. Last week, he banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, a move that prompted the outlets to sue. The president has also sued multiple news organizations, including CBS News, ABC News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. CBS and ABC opted to settle.
The post Judge Tosses Trump’s ‘Election Interference’ Lawsuit Against Newspaper and Pollster first appeared on Mediaite.