Trump urges Iowa judge to keep 2024 political poll lawsuit alive

DES MOINES, Iowa (CN) — President Donald Trump fought Friday to keep alive his lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer over a poll published days before the 2024 election that showed former Vice President Kamala Harris narrowly leading in Iowa.

Lawyers for Trump, who claims the pool was fraudulently manipulated to damage his campaign, returned to Iowa state court urging Polk County District Judge Scott Beattie to reject the Register’s motion to dismiss.

The Register and Selzer argue the case fails under the First Amendment’s protection of the press reporting political news. Trump contends the poll created by Selzer and published by the Register constitutes commercial speech governed by Iowa’s consumer fraud law and is not protected by the First Amendment.

“This is a frivolous case,” Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel for The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is representing Selzer, told the court at Friday’s hearing. “It does not belong in this court or in any court.”

“This case is novel — the president of the United States filing suit against the largest newspaper in the state,” said Nicholas Klinefeldt of Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath in Des Moines, who represents the Des Moines Register and its parent Gannett Co. “But what is not novel is politicians attempting to intimidate the media.”

Alan Ostergren, a Des Moines attorney representing Trump and co-plaintiffs U.S. Representative Marianette Miller-Meeks and former Iowa state Senator Bradley Zaun, acknowledged the defendants have a First Amendment interest. But he said the plaintiffs “have an interest to run for public office without rampant manipulation of the process” by the media through a “statistically improbable” political poll. Miller-Meeks and Zaun similarly argue the Register’s congressional poll widely missed the mark.

Ostergren argued the media should not receive an automatic First Amendment shield and that the case should proceed to discovery and be decided by a jury rather than dismissed at the outset.

Beattie said the case’s “massive First Amendment implications” and the chilling effect it could have on free speech “give me pause.” He pressed Ostergren on what the plaintiffs hoped to obtain in discovery.

Ostergren said discovery would delve into Selzer’s polling process and decisions made in the face of “utterly improbable numbers” prior to publication. How did “such a colossal mistake” get “pushed out the door?” Was the poll result based on actual polling or just fabricated?

“We can’t know that until we’ve gone through the discovery process,” he said.

Despite his 2024 victory, Trump filed suit in state court that December accusing the Register and Selzer of consumer fraud for Selzer’s poll published three days ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election showing Harris leading Trump by three points in Iowa. Trump ended up beating Harris in Iowa by more than 13 points.

Trump said in his complaint filed in Polk County District Court that the Selzer poll “falsely showed Harris leading President Trump in Iowa with just three days to go, which suggested major, in reality nonexistent, momentum for Harris nationwide.” Trump says Selzer intentionally “doctored” the poll to affect the outcome of the election.

“In truth, the Harris Poll,” Trump argued, “was just a piece of political theater concocted by an individual – Selzer – who, as a supposedly legendary pollster with the power to shape public perception of elections, should have known better than to poison the electorate with a poll that was nothing more than a work of fantasy.”

Trump claims Selzer and the Register violated the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which, in part, prohibits “deception, fraud, false pretense or false promise” intended to induce others to rely on the deception in connection with the sale of consumer merchandise.

In a brief, the Register argues Trump’s suit falls outside the law because it identifies no wrongful conduct tied to the sale of consumer merchandise and shows no ascertainable loss of money or property resulting from the poll.

Over the past 18 months the case has bounced back and forth between state and federal courts, producing a dizzying blur of motions, briefs and orders. A second suit making the same claims was filed by a Des Moines man was tossed in November 2025 by a federal judge in Des Moines, and his appeal of that decision is awaiting argument before the Eighth Circuit.

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