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FIRST ON FOX — President Donald Trump scored a legal victory Friday in his lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register, and the case will now end up in Iowa state court after an appeals court sided with the president and ruled that a lower court had overstepped.
Trump’s legal team, which accused the defendants of “brazen interference” in the final 2024 presidential runoff in Iowa that showed him trailing Democrat Kamala Harris, initially requested that the case be moved to Iowa state court in May after the defendants “removed” the case to federal court.
A federal judge then rejected the request, but the Obama-appointed judge’s decision was overturned by the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit.
In a sharply worded opinion, the 8th Circuit granted Trump’s request for mandamus — a rare court order used to correct obvious legal errors — and ordered a district judge to treat the case as dismissed “without prejudice,” allowing Trump to dismiss the case again.
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President Donald Trump scored a key legal victory Friday in his lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“Today’s fair and appropriate ruling by the 8th Circuit ensures that President Trump’s case, centered on the false election interference polls conducted and lionized by J. Ann Selzer, the Des Moines Register and its owner Gannett, will be brought before the state court of Iowa, where it belongs,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told Fox News Digital.
“These defendants have repeatedly engaged in illegal maneuvers to avoid state court, and that ends today,” the spokesperson continued. “President Trump will continue to hold accountable those who peddle fake news, lies, and smears.”
Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which represents Selzer, released a statement.
“The 8th Circuit’s decision focused entirely on a technical point of civil procedure and said nothing about the merits of the case. This case is just as frivolous today as it was yesterday, and that fact will be borne out in whatever forum it is ultimately resolved,” Corn-Revere told Fox News Digital.
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J. Ann Selzer came under fire after releasing a wildly inaccurate poll ahead of the 2024 election, showing Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in Iowa. Trump won the state by more than 13 points. (Getty Images/The Bulwark Podcast via YouTube screenshot)
Lark-Marie Antón, a spokeswoman for the Des Moines Register’s parent company, Gannett, believes the matter belongs in federal court.
“We are evaluating the court’s decision. Given the nature of the case and the fact that it involves the President of the United States as a plaintiff, we continue to believe that the federal courts are the most appropriate forum for this trial. In the event the case is heard in the Iowa state courts, we are confident that the case will be fairly adjudicated,” Antón told Fox News Digital.
The lawsuit was originally filed in December in Polk County, Iowa, and sought what it called “accountability for the brazen election interference committed by ‘The Des Moines Register and Selzer’ in favor of now-defeated former Democratic candidate Kamala Harris through the use of a leaked and manipulated Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll” released Nov. 2 2024.
“The Harris Poll was not a ‘failure,’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election,” the lawsuit said at the time, adding that “Defendants and their cohorts within the Democratic Party hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative that Harris was inevitable in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.”
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Donald Trump arrives on stage during a campaign event at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, January 14, 2024. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Selzer released his latest poll sponsored by the Des Moines Register, showing Harris leading Trump by three points in Iowa just three days before the election. The shock poll showed a seven-point gap from Trump to Harris compared to September, when he had a four-point lead over the vice president in the same poll.
Selzer’s poll was publicized in the days leading up to the election because his predictions were historically accurate. Many suggested that this implied a monumental shift in Midwestern support for Harris in a red state, but the poll proved far from the case.
Trump beat Harris in Iowa by more than 13 percentage points, the third time in a row he has won the state and the first time a candidate has won by double digits there since 1980.
Shortly after the election, Selzer announced that she was done with election polling and was moving on to “other projects.”
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Lindsay Kornick and Brooke Singman of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.
