Iowa Pollster’s Attorneys Slam Trump for Refiling ‘Sham Lawsuit’ in State Court Right After Dropping Fed Complaint

Photo of J. Ann Selzer by Jenny Condon Photography.

President Donald Trump’s legal team refiled the lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer Monday in state court, right after filing a notice of dismissal in federal court — a move Selzer’s attorneys are slamming as “political gamesmanship.”

Earlier Monday, news broke that Trump had dropped his lawsuit against Selzer and the Des Moines Register, which he filed in response to a poll she conducted for the paper right before the November election.

The poll in question showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump 47% to 44% among likely Iowa voters — a shocking result that made headlines across the country. Unsurprisingly, Trump was enraged at the poll, and neither winning the election (including a double-digit victory in Iowa) nor Selzer’s retirement did much to soothe his ruffled feathers. Later that month, Trump called for Selzer and the newspaper to be investigated and then followed that up with a lawsuit in December.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”), a nonpartisan free speech advocacy nonprofit, announced in January that it would represent Selzer pro bono, and issued a statement blasting Trump’s lawsuit for being “about as unconstitutional as it gets.” Selzer’s legal team includes FIRE attorneys Robert Corn-Revere as lead counsel, along with Conor Fitzpatrick, Greg Greubel, and Adam Steinbaugh, plus Matthew McGuire of the Des Moines law firm Nyemaster Goode as additional local counsel.

A motion to dismiss filed on Selzer’s behalf in February cited extensive case precedent on why the lawsuit overall was an attempt to undermine both the letter and intent of the First Amendment and delivered a scathing point-by-point takedown of how each element of the legal claims the plaintiffs are attempting to bring are “fatally flawed on every level” and nothing more than “a transparent attempt to punish news coverage and analysis of a political campaign.”

The motion was especially scathing about the complaint’s efforts to frame the cause of action under Iowa’s consumer fraud law — a tactic that has been frequently favored by both Trump and Elon Musk in their litigious battles against their critics, often as an attempt to circumvent anti-SLAPP defenses.

Corn-Revere, a First Amendment litigator for more than four decades who joined FIRE as chief counsel two years ago, spoke to Mediaite in February and scoffed at the legal arguments from Trump’s legal team — “it’s not just that they didn’t make their case, there was no case to be made” — and highlighted the broader importance of Selzer’s case in the fight to protect First Amendment rights.

As Mediaite noted in the coverage of the initial dismissal, Trump’s attorneys filed a notice informing the court that all plaintiffs were dismissing the case without prejudice, theoretically meaning that the complaint could be refiled later before the statute of limitations runs. The constitutional defenses against Trump still remain.

Reached for comment by Mediaite Monday afternoon, Corn-Revere confirmed that FIRE was “aware of the Trump team’s voluntary dismissal.”

“There is no settlement in this case,” he added. “We are reviewing next steps as we continue to defend J. Ann Selzer’s First Amendment rights.”

Later Monday evening, FIRE released an updated statement, announcing that Trump had refiled the case in state court and sharply criticizing the legal manuever as an “obvious and improper” effort to evade their client’s legal rights, escape a newly-enacted Iowa law that would go into effect on Tuesday, and further attack Selzer’s First Amendment rights.

The statement read:

President Trump and his two co-plaintiffs filed a notice of dismissal of their claims against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register after losing a bid to remand the case to state court. This maneuver was not in response to any settlement and is a transparent attempt to avoid federal court review of the president’s transparently frivolous claims.

The case was refiled in state court today, one day before an Iowa law intended to provide strong protections against baseless claims like these — an “anti-SLAPP” statute — goes into effect. The procedural gamesmanship is obvious and improper.

Whatever court ultimately reviews this matter, FIRE will defend J. Ann Selzer’s First Amendment rights, and we remain confident the courts will see through this sham lawsuit.

Eminent constitutional law scholar and Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law Erwin Chemerinsky told Mediaite after the case was initially dropped (and before it was known that it had been refiled in state court) that it was an improper claim from the beginning.

“This was a frivolous lawsuit using the courts to make a political point and intimidate the press,” said Chemerinsky. “It is a lawsuit that warranted sanctions.”

New York Law School professor emerita Nadine Strossen also took a highly critical view of Trump’s legal case. In response to an email from Mediaite, she wrote:

While it is welcome news that Donald Trump dismissed this patently frivolous lawsuit, no dismissal can reverse the damage to free speech that the lawsuit has already done.

By directly imposing non-recoupable tangible and intangible costs upon the defendants in having to mount a defense, the lawsuit also imposes incalculable indirect costs by deterring other journalists from publishing anything that might anger the president, even when it is protected by the First Amendment. Also undermined are the fundamental rights of every one of us to receive this vitally important type of information and analysis, which is crucial to our democracy.

As the Supreme Court has stressed, speech about public affairs is more than a matter of individual self expression; “it is the essence of self-government.”

When informed that Trump had refiled the lawsuit in state court, Strossen replied, “Unbelievable!”

Legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams (father of Mediaite founder and owner Dan Abrams) commented that he expected that the president’s refiled lawsuit would face similar hurdles as the original effort.

“The very notion that a libel suit would be commenced by a winning candidate in a state against a pollster who had opined at one point that he was behind is no less bizarre in state court than federal,” said Abrams. “And the First Amendment provides a powerful defense to any such claim in either court.”

Mediaite has reached out to Chemerinsky regarding the refiling of the lawsuit and will update if there is additional comment.

This article has been updated with additional information.