Trump sues Des Moines Register for ‘brazen election interference’

President-elect Donald Trump is suing the Des Moines Register newspaper, along with its parent company and its former pollster, for “brazen election interference” over a poll published days before the 2024 presidential election.

The Nov. 2 poll suggested Democratic nominee Kamala Harris would win Iowa, a predominantly Republican state.

Trump filed the lawsuit fresh off the victory of having ABC News settle a defamation lawsuit for $15m (£12m), over an anchor falsely saying Trump was found liable for rape last year (he was liable for sexual abuse).

Trump’s often hostile approach to the American press goes back to his first presidential campaign, and is expected to carry into his second term.

He announced his plans to sue the Iowa-based paper during a news conference on Monday where he called the press “corrupt”. The lawsuit was filed in Polk County, Iowa, later that morning.

In it, he accuses renowned pollster J. Ann Selzer of “brazen election interference”.

Her poll had suggested the president-elect would lose in Iowa by 3-4 points. Other Iowa polls pointed to a different outcome and many analysts were baffled that she would predict Trump would lose a state he had won by more than eight points in 2020.

In the election less than a week later, Trump carried Iowa by 13 points.

“In my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference,” Trump said during the Monday press conference.

“I feel I have to do this,” he added. “It costs a lot of money to do it but we have to straighten out the press.”

The lawsuit alleges Selzer intentionally swung the poll results in favour of Harris.

“The Harris poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 presidential election,” the lawsuit reads.

It also accuses “left-wing pollsters” in general of manipulating the results of their data and not using “widely accepted polling methodologies”. The filing, though, does not identify any other pollsters or give details on those allegations.

Selzer retired soon after the election, which she said was not related to the poll.

Trump is asking the court to award him financial damages and cover his attorneys’ fees, and also to compel the news outlet to “disclose all information upon which they relied” for the poll.

Spokesperson for the Des Moines Register Lark-Marie Anton said it has already released the “the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer”, and that it has acknowledged that the poll “did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa”.

“We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit,” she said in a statement to BBC’s news partner CBS News.

Seth Stern, advocacy director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation said the lawsuit would create an environment where “journalists can’t help but look over their shoulders knowing the incoming administration is on the lookout for any pretext or excuse to come after them”, according to a post on X.

Trump has previously sued CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times. In the final days of his 2024 campaign, he also sued CBS over how it had edited an interview with Harris, which the network is seeking to have dismissed.

The Des Moines Register lawsuit comes after ABC News agreed to pay $15m (£12m) as a charitable contribution to a “presidential foundation and museum” that Trump is expected to establish for his post-presidency life.

George Stephanopoulos falsely said in an interview earlier this year that Trump had been found “liable for rape”.

A jury in a civil case last year in fact had determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse”, which has a specific definition under New York law, of writer E. Jean Carroll .

ABC also published an editor’s note expressing its “regret” for the statements by Stephanopoulos and agreed to pay $1m towards Trump’s legal fees.