(AFP) – A judge in Iowa has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump against a pollster and a newspaper over a poll that had him losing the Midwestern US state in the 2024 presidential election. Trump sued pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register over a survey published just days before the vote that showed him trailing Democratic rival Kamala Harris by three points in Iowa.
Trump, who had scored easy victories in Iowa in 2016 and 2020, went on to win the state in 2024 by 13 points. In his suit, Trump asserted that the poll amounted to “election interference” and “consumer fraud,” arguments rejected by Judge Scott Beattie in a 64-page ruling on Wednesday. Polling amounts to speech protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and of the press, the judge said.
“A poll during a presidential and congressional election year is speech about a matter of public concern,” he said, “occupying the summit of the pyramid of First Amendment values.” Beattie dismissed the case “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be brought again. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which represented Selzer, welcomed the ruling.
“We’re pleased that the court recognized what we’ve said all along: This lawsuit was laughable from the beginning and never should have been brought,” FIRE chief counsel Bob Corn-Revere said in a statement. Trump has made attacks on the media a hallmark of his political identity since his rise to power, filing multiple defamation lawsuits and describing the press as the “enemy of the people.”
On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the White House to reopen its doors to reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico who were banned last week by the president.
© 2024 AFP
