President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Lawyers representing the Des Moines Register and its parent company have criticized Donald Trump for taking legal action against the Iowa newspaper and its former pollster, J. Ann Selzer. They argue that Trump’s lawsuit is baseless and unconstitutional, alleging that it is merely a product of his inability to accept defeat graciously, branding him as a “sore winner.”
The lawsuit was filed by Trump in December 2024 following the publication of a poll conducted before the 2024 presidential election. The poll, created by Selzer, had indicated a slight lead for Vice President Kamala Harris in the race, despite Trump ultimately emerging as the victor. Even though the poll was released just three days prior to the election, it inaccurately predicted Harris leading by about three points in Iowa, where Trump ended up winning by approximately 13 points.
Under an Iowa law targeting “consumer fraud,” Trump brought forth allegations against Selzer and the Des Moines Register, asserting that they colluded with individuals from the Democratic Party to push a false narrative favoring Harris in the final stages of the presidential race. The lawsuit specifically accuses the defendants of engaging in blatant election interference by utilizing a supposedly manipulated poll to mislead voters.
“The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, brings this lawsuit ostensibly to ‘seek accountability’ for alleged ‘election interference’; but instead, his lawsuit only confirms that President Trump is a sore winner,” the filing states. “[N]o court in this country has ever recognized a cause of action based on the publication of ‘fraudulent news.’ This is no time to start. The very notion is an affront to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
Trump is seeking relief in the form of damages and a court order to prevent the newspaper from publishing any future “deceptive polls” that might “poison the electorate.” But the Register argues that even the relief being sought by the president would be unconstitutional.
“To borrow a phrase, the Amended Complaint is a piece of “political theater’ that amounts to ‘nothing more than a work of fantasy,”” the Register’s attorneys wrote. “There is no legal basis for President Trump to obtain the relief he seeks; indeed, such relief would violate free speech principles.”
Additionally, the newspaper argues that the fraud law under which Trump is suing has no place in a legal action over allegations of election interference. The law is meant to punish unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent conduct “in connection with the advertisement, sale, or lease of consumer merchandise, or the solicitation of contributions for charitable purposes.”
“President Trump attempts to punish press coverage of which he disapproves through tortured application of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, as well as through frivolous tort claims for fraudulent misrepresentation and negligent misrepresentation,” the filing continued. “If he had his way, such claims would become weapons for any political candidate to challenge any press coverage they do not like. However, his claims all fail to state a cause of action on which relief can be granted.”
The motion to dismiss goes on to assert that polls are non-actionable opinions that cannot constitute actionable statements of material fact as they are the product of an expert’s opinion on methodology and are snapshots in time of randomized samples of voters.
The paper also published an “extensive write-up” about how the poll was performed and the factors upon which Selzer weighted the responses. The motion notes that nowhere in Trump’s filings does he allege that the data collected was false or that the methodology was implemented incorrectly.
The Register further argues that Trump’s own claim of injury for which he is seeking relief — alleging in the complaint he was “badly deceived and misled” — is contradicted by the president’s own words in the very same complaint, which states, “President Trump certainly could not have trailed Harris by three points in Iowa at any time in the 2024 cycle.”
“Plaintiffs do not allege that they credited the poll results or relied on them to make any consumer decision; they do not allege this in the Amended Complaint because they in fact did no such thing,” the filing states. “Plaintiffs were not in fact ‘deceived’ by the Iowa Poll and were perfectly capable of disregarding its analysis and conclusion based on their own certainty of its inaccuracy. To the extent they were ‘deceived and misled,’ such an injury was easily avoidable if Plaintiffs (together with their very well-staffed and capable campaigns) simply read the published underlying polling data and reached their own conclusions about their import.”
Trump’s lawsuit was one of a flurry of actions initiated by the president after winning the 2024 election, including defamation suits against ABC and star anchor George Stephanopoulos that controversially settled for $15 million and another in which the president is seeking $20 billion from CBS over a 60 Minutes segment featuring Harris that he claimed was “doctored.”
The suit against the Register and Selzer has long been panned by legal experts who have criticized it as an effort to impose a financial burden on the defendants.
The case is before U.S. District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger, an appointee of Barack Obama
