Trump sues Des Moines Register Newspaper, accusing it of ‘election interference’
United States President-elect Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit accusing a newspaper and a polling firm of “brazen election interference” for publishing a pre-election survey that underestimated his support.
The lawsuit, filed late on Monday, claims that The Des Moines Register, its parent company Gannett, and pollster Ann Selzer intentionally downplayed Trump’s popularity in a poll showing him trailing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
The November 2 poll, which indicated Harris leading Trump by three percentage points in Iowa, attracted significant attention, especially since Trump had won the state by wide margins in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
In the recent presidential race, Trump secured Iowa with a margin exceeding 13 percentage points.
The lawsuit, filed in Polk County, Iowa, alleges that Selzer’s polling error was deliberate. It quotes Trump stating: “She knew exactly what she was doing.” The suit, based on claims of violations of Iowa consumer fraud law, demands triple the damages as determined by a jury.
A spokeswoman for The Des Moines Register, Lark-Marie Anton, defended the newspaper’s reporting and dismissed the lawsuit as baseless.
“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, cross-tabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer,” Anton stated.
Pollster Ann Selzer, who did not respond immediately to a request for comment, told PBS last week that she was puzzled by the notion that the poll had been designed to produce a specific outcome.
This lawsuit follows a defamation case Trump recently settled with ABC News over anchor George Stephanopoulos’s false claim that he had been found civilly liable for rape.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil liberties group, condemned Trump’s lawsuit as an infringement on the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech.
“If newspapers and polling firms are sued for ‘deceptive practices’ because they publish stories and poll results politicians don’t like, every media outlet’s First Amendment rights are threatened. Getting a poll wrong is not election interference or fraud,” the group stated.
Trump, who is also suing CBS News over an interview with Harris that he claims was misleadingly edited, faces significant legal challenges due to the robust speech protections in the US.
However, these lawsuits could still complicate matters for news organisations by exposing internal communications and requiring depositions from journalists and executives.
