An Iowa judge on Wednesday tossed Trump’s lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and Ann Selzer over a fraudulent Iowa 2024 poll that showed Kamala Harris ahead.
A poll conducted by Selzer & Co claimed Kamala Harris was ahead of Trump in Iowa by 3 percent.
President Trump handily won Iowa in 2016 and 2020 so the poll created shockwaves just before the 2024 election.
“Likely voters in Iowa were asked: “If the general election were held today and the candidates for president were Kamala Harris for the Democrats, Donald Trump for the Republicans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for We the People and Chase Oliver for the Libertarians, for whom would you vote? If you already voted, for whom did you vote?”” The Des Moines Register reported.
“Likely Iowa voters in the 2024 general election have been polled four times since March 2024 about the presidential candidate they would vote for at the time. In October 2024, 47% say they would vote for or already have voted for Kamala Harris and 44% for Donald Trump,” The Des Moines Register reported.
President Trump won Iowa by more than 13 points in 2024.
In December 2024, President Trump filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and its pollster, Ann Selzer, accusing them of “brazen election interference” and fraud.
Trump filed the lawsuit in Polk County, Iowa, under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.
An Iowa District Judge tossed the case on Wednesday.
Trump’s legal team will take the case to the Iowa Supreme Court.
Excerpt from the Associated Press:
A judge on Wednesday dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit accusing The Des Moines Register and its former pollster of misrepresenting the state of the 2024 presidential race, rejecting the president’s claim that the newspaper’s poll coverage violated Iowa’s consumer fraud law.
Calling the case extraordinary, Iowa District Judge Scott J. Beattie said that allowing the lawsuit and its “faulty” claims to proceed could have a chilling effect that “can discourage others from reporting on and debating public affairs.” He sided with pollster J. Ann Selzer and the newspaper, who described the lawsuit as a conspiracy theory and an affront to free speech protections.
Trump and his team have filed several lawsuits against media organizations accusing them of bias, calling into question the boundaries of free speech protections, particularly for the press. Some of those lawsuits have ended in settlements.
In dismissing the case in Iowa state court, Beattie wrote that Trump’s suit sought 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.” After hearing the arguments, the judge concluded the constitutional protection “is too great, and the reach is too far. The case must therefore be dismissed.”
Beattie said the case would have to be dismissed even if, solely for the purpose of deciding the motions, he accepted the Trump team’s allegations that the poll was intentionally skewed and its results fabricated. “Even with this assumption, each of the three counts still fails,” the judge wrote, because the lawsuit did not meet the legal requirements for fraud or consumer deception. He made clear that the poll and coverage of it are constitutionally protected political speech and not a commercial product.
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