Pollster J. Ann Selzer filed a motion on Friday asking a federal judge to dismiss President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against her, the Des Moines Register and its parent company Gannett over an inaccurate poll he called “brazen election interference” and fraud.
Selzer’s poll, released days before the 2024 election, predicted Kamala Harris would win the key swing state of Iowa; Trump went on to win the state by 13 percentage points. The president sued Selzer and her media bosses soon after, with his attorneys saying the poll “was not reality, it was election-interfering fiction.”
On Friday, Selzer’s filing, which was obtained by TheWrap, said the president incorrectly assumes “false news” falls outside the First Amendment, “but over 200 years of American free speech law and practice prove otherwise.”
The filing then quoted the 1987 film “The Princess Bride” in arguing that, while Selzer’s poll may have been incorrect, President Trump was wrong to call it “fraud.”
“Plaintiffs try to shoehorn their claims into an existing category by calling the Iowa Poll ‘fake’ and asserting actionable ‘fraud’ occurred,” the filing stated. “But ‘in the famous words of Inigo Montoya from the movie ‘The Princess Bride,’ ‘You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.’”
Selzer is being defended pro bono by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech advocacy group.
The president sued Selzer, the Des Moines Register and Gannett in December, a month after he beat Harris in the election. Selzer, a veteran pollster who has her work consistently cited by media outlets, had a “significant and impactful opportunity to deceive voters” with her incorrect poll, Trump’s lawsuit claimed. Her polling also compelled Republicans to divert campaign time and money away from other states in favor of Iowa in the days leading up the election — an unnecessary move had her poll been more accurate, the suit noted.
“The Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump claimed, adding that “defendants and their cohorts in the Democrat Party hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.”
Selzer’s Friday filing pointed to previous cases that show while accuracy in news reporting is important, imposing a “high duty of care” on those in the news business would have a “chilling effect which is unacceptable under our Constitution.” The filing further added that while “fake news” may be a “tag line” that plays well “for some on the campaign trail,” her incorrect poll did not violate the law.
“Plaintiffs wield the terms ‘election interference’ and ‘fraud’ like an alchemist’s
incantation, hoping to transform their political dross into legal gold,” the filing said. “But no amount of vacuous repetition can convert their expansive concept of ‘fake news’ to the very limited and specific legal concept of fraud.”
Selzer, in her filing, requested the court grant her motion to dismiss the president’s claims with prejudice and requested oral argument on the motion.
