Washington According to a copy of the complaint seen by NBC News, Donald Trump is suing Ann Selzer, her polling company, The Des Moines Register, and the parent company of the newspaper, Gannett, alleging consumer fraud.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed Monday night in Polk County, Iowa, it aims to hold people accountable for blatantly interfering with an election that showed Kamala Harris leading by three percentage points in Iowa on November 2.
Trump’s attorneys claim in the lawsuit that the fact that he won the state by double digits is election-interfering fiction. The Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which forbids fraudulent advertising, is the legal basis for Trump’s assertion.
This is what I’m doing because I feel obligated to. When Trump discussed the lawsuit on Monday, he stated, “I’m going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time, and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by 3 or 4 points.”
Following the election, Selzer declared that she will quit participating in political polling and pursue other endeavors.
It was generally assumed that Trump would win the state when the Register released the Selzer survey. According to a survey of 808 likely Iowa voters, Trump received 44% of the vote, while Harris received 47%.
Trump’s attorneys wrote that the defendants and their Democratic Party allies intended the Harris Poll would give Harris a false sense of inevitability in the last week of the 2024 presidential election.
A potential leak predicts the results just before the poll is released, which leads to an internal investigation.
According to a Register representative, the publication stands by its coverage.
The spokesperson, Lark-Marie Anton, stated, “We have released the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer, acknowledging that the Selzer/Des Moines Register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa.” “We maintain our coverage of the issue and think this lawsuit is baseless.
Selzer remained silent.
The lawsuit is the most recent front in Trump’s fight against what he says is unfair media and analyst coverage. In a defamation action over the weekend, Trump received a $15 million payout from ABC News in addition to $1 million for his attorney’s expenses. Following its awarding of prizes for stories about Russia and his 2016 campaign, Trump is also suing the Pulitzer Prize Board.
The complaint may have a chilling effect on the media, according to media law experts, but they were doubtful it could succeed in court.
The odds of success here are slim to none, but winning in court is not likely the real goal of this lawsuit,” said Clay Calvert, a media law expert and professor at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law. “The real goal is to scare journalists and the media. Regretfully, I believe that this litigation is merely a sign of things to come.
According to the lawsuit, the manipulated Harris Poll misled millions of Americans, including the plaintiff, Iowans, and those who donated to President Trump’s Campaign and its affiliated organizations (the Trump 2024 Campaign). The polling failure was not an unexpected coincidence; rather, it was deliberate.
It attacks Selzer s reputation as a standard-bearing pollster, alleging that the polling miss showing Harris with a lead in Iowa that never materialized was intended to sway the race. The suit argues a pattern by Selzer of trying to influence political races in favor of Democrats and says her large platform offers “a significant and impactful opportunity to deceive voters.”
Rick Hasen, a UCLA School of Law expert on election law, promptly threw out the case.
He commented on his blog, “I don’t expect this lawsuit to go anywhere.”
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