Trump: Shock Iowa Poll Was 'Election Interference'

President-elect Trump won the November election, but that hasn't stopped him from suing over what he claims is "brazen election interference." Days after securing a hefty defamation settlement from ABC News, Trump has sued the Des Moines Register and its top pollster, alleging violations of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. He specifically mentions the final Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll of the 2024 race, which showed Kamala Harris with a 3-point lead in Iowa, a state Trump won by 13 points. Even at the time the poll was released on Nov. 2, "Trump was universally expected to win the state," per CNN.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Polk County, Iowa, describes the findings of the poll—based on phone interviews with 808 likely voters in Iowa, conducted by J. Ann Selzer and her firm, Selzer & Co.—as "contrary to reality and defying credulity" and "manipulated" to artificially boost the outlook for Democrats, per Fox News. "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," write Trump's attorneys, per CNN. "In my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference," Trump said at a press conference earlier Monday, per CBS News.

However, the suit fails to mention evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Selzer, who expressed incredulity at the suggestion "that I was in cahoots with somebody [to commit a crime]" to PBS on Friday. A rep for the Register adds the "poll did not reflect the ultimate margin" of Trump's victory in Iowa, but the outlet stands by its reporting and views the lawsuit as "without merit," per CBS. CNN cites a legal expert as saying Trump's claims are unlikely to succeed in court, but that's besides the point. "Trump is using the lawsuit to wage a broadside against what he perceives as left-wing media, mainstream press coverage of elections and the role of pollsters during campaigns," the outlet notes. "We have to straighten out the press," Trump said Monday, per CBS. (Selzer will no longer conduct the poll.)