NEW YORK: President-elect Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register newspaper and its top pollster, court documents showed, the day after he stepped up his legal threats against news outlets and said he would also consider suing social media influencers and others for defamation.

The lawsuit filed on Monday night in 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 13 percentage points in Iowa.

“Selzers polling ‘miss’ was not an astonishing coincidenceit 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.

Gannett, parent company of the Des Moines Register, is also named in the suit. A Gannett representative said the organisation stands by its reporting and believes the suit is without merit. In his remarks to reporters on Monday, Trump threatened to sue the Des Moines Register over the poll.

“In my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference,” Trump said. It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press, Trump also told reporters.

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.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2024