The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) announced on Tuesday their decision to represent an Iowa pollster entangled in a lawsuit with President-elect Trump stemming from a November poll from renowned pollster Ann Selzer that showed him losing to Vice President Harris.
“Trump’s lawsuit, brought under an Iowa law against ‘consumer fraud,’ violates long-standing constitutional principles. It’s also entirely meritless under the Iowa law,” FIRE released in an article following the announcement.
“The lawsuit is the very definition of a ‘SLAPP’ suit — a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Such tactical claims are filed purely for the purpose of imposing punishing litigation costs on perceived opponents, not because they have any merit or stand any chance of success,” they added. “In other words, the lawsuit is the punishment.”
The group claims the poll was an outlier that projected inaccurate predictions unintentionally and did not violate the law.
Trump alleges the poll published in the Des Moines Register was intended to “deceive” voters.
“Millions of Americans, including Plaintiff, residents of Iowa, and Iowans who contributed to President Trump’s Campaign and its affiliated entities (the “Trump 2024 Campaign”), were deceived by the doctored Harris Poll,” the former president’s attorneys wrote in the legal filing.
“President Trump has made impactful, widely read statements on the matter, writing on Truth Social, inter alia, that Selzer’s misconduct caused ‘great distrust and uncertainty at a very critical time.’”
Selzer’s lawyers say the lawsuit violates First Amendment rights, echoing Selzer’s original public statement that she had no intent of wrongdoing.
“I am mystified about what the motivation anybody thinks I had and would act on in such a public poll,” Selzer stated during an interview on PBS’s “Iowa Press.”
“So, the idea that I intentionally set up to deliver this response, when I’ve never done that before, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do it, it’s not my ethic.”
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