Donald Trump has filed his lawsuit against Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, the Des Moines Register and Gannett, claiming they engaged in “election interference” with a poll published just before the election showing that Kamala Harris was ahead in the state by three points.
Trump’s lawsuit, filed in Polk County, claims fraud and violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, according to FoxNews.com, which first reported that the lawsuit was filed late on Monday.
Trump won the state by more than 13 percentage points, but he has attacked Selzer since then.
Polls are snapshots of a particular moment during a campaign, and Selzer and the Des Moines Register have done extensive post-mortems on their methodology and whether the poll failed to capture late deciders.
But Selzer has denied that the poll was an intentional effort to impact the election results.
Lark-Marie Anton, spokesperson for the Register, said in a statement, “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. We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit.”
Trump, though, has a long history of suing news organizations, even with lawsuits that have been quickly dismissed. On Monday, following ABC’s agreement to settle his lawsuit against the network over comments made by George Stephanopoulos, Trump vowed to file more litigation, including the lawsuit over the Iowa poll, telling reporters, “We have to straighten out the press.”
Trump has long railed about pre-election polls that showed him losing, believing that the data impacts the actual results of the election. Even after his election victory, he stewed over the Selzer poll, and called for an investigation.
But he’s determined to also tie up media outlets with litigation, even those likely to be tossed out amid First Amendment challenges. The strategy is to chill reporters and media companies who don’t want the hassle of being dragged into court.
“I don’t expect this lawsuit to go anywhere,” wrote Rick Hasen, UCLA professor, on his ElectionLaw blog.
Just before the election, Trump sued CBS News over the way it edited a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, even though he was not a part of the program or even the subject of the answer she gave on the program. Trump claimed that the network violated Texas’ Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which is typically used in false advertising claims.
“Plaintiff’s attempt to punish Defendants for their editorial judgments is barred by the First Amendment,” CBS News’ attorneys said in response.
Trump’s lawsuit, per Fox News.com, claims that consumers were “badly deceived and misled as to the actual position of the respective candidates in the Iowa Presidential race.”
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