NEW YORK, (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register newspaper and its former top pollster, the day after he stepped up his legal threats against news outlets and said he would also consider suing social media influencers for defamation.
The lawsuit filed Monday night in Iowa’s Polk County seeks “accountability for brazen election interference committed by” the newspaper and pollster J. Ann Selzer over its poll published on Nov. 2. That poll showed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris leading Trump by three percentage points in Iowa.
“Selzer’s polling ‘miss’ was not an astonishing coincidence—it was intentional,” the lawsuit said. “As President Trump observed: ‘She knew exactly what she was doing.'”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order barring the Des Moines Register from engaging in “ongoing deceptive and misleading acts and practices” related to polling.
A Des Moines Register representative said the organization stands by its reporting and believes the lawsuit is without merit.
Selzer declined to comment.
Trump filed the lawsuit just days after ABC News agreed to settle a defamation case he brought by donating $15 million to his presidential library and publicly apologizing for comments by anchor George Stephanopoulos, who inaccurately said the president-elect had been found liable for rape.
Trump has touted the settlement as a major victory, and there are already signs that it could embolden his lawyers on fights with media companies.
On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers cited the ABC deal in a letter to the judge overseeing the president-elect’s copyright lawsuit against Simon & Schuster over audio recordings of an author’s interviews with Trump, saying they hope the book publisher will “follow Mr. Stephanopoulos’ expression of contrition.”
“Since President Trump’s decisive victory resulting (in) him being due to become the 47th President of the United States, there has been a renewed accountability among those who violated his rights over the last four years,” Trump’s lawyers said.
A representative for Simon & Schuster did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit, which was filed in New York federal court.
Some legal experts say Trump’s comments and legal actions risk chilling news coverage of the incoming administration even if legal protections for journalists are for now robust.
