With five weeks until his return to the White House, Donald Trump is already delivering on his promise to wage legal vendettas against political enemies and journalists, alike. On Monday night, less than 48 hours after securing a $15 million settlement from ABC News, Trump filed a lawsuit in Iowa District Court accusing the venerated pollster Ann Selzer and her polling company—as well as The Des Moines Register and its parent company, Gannett—of “brazen election interference” and consumer fraud over her November 2 poll showing Kamala Harris winning by three points in Iowa. As Trump lawyers Edward Paltzik and Des Moines-based attorney Alan R. Ostergren noted in the suit, “President Trump ultimately won Iowa by over thirteen points.”
Whether that polling error constitutes an “election-interfering fiction,” as the suit alleges, is now the question before a Polk County court. Iowa is notably in the minority of states that lacks an anti-SLAPP law, a protection that gives judges the ability to swiftly toss out frivolous attacks on free speech. But it’s still a long putt: Trump’s newest courthouse adventure leans on an extremely aggressive reading of a statute in Iowa’s consumer fraud law intended to prevent businesses from making misrepresentations to deceive purchasers.
