Trump Drops Lawsuit Against Iowa Pollster Ann Selzer — Her Attorneys Confirm ‘No Settlement’ Paid

Photo of J. Ann Selzer by Jenny Condon Photography.

President Donald Trump has dropped his lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann 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.

In the complaint, Trump’s attorneys attempted to frame the case as a consumer fraud issue, arguing that Selzer’s poll constituted “fake news” and was an act of “brazen election interference,” that was an “unfair act or practice” under Iowa’s consumer fraud law “because the publication and release of the Harris Poll ‘caused substantial, unavoidable injury to consumers that was not outweighed by any consumer or competitive benefits which the practice produced.’”

The complaint was later amended to add a member of Congress who won her re-election, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), and a state senator who lost, Bradley Zaun.

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 — and Selzer’s lawyers deployed a reference to Inigo Montoya, the virtuous Spanish swordsman seeking to avenge his father’s murder in the beloved 1973 book and 1987 film, The Princess Bride, to knock down these arguments.

In February, Mediaite interviewed Corn-Revere, a First Amendment litigator for more than four decades who joined FIRE as chief counsel two years ago.

Corn-Revere 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.

This case “is larger than any one pollster or any one publisher; this is part of the leading edge of cases trying to intimidate the media in general and water down First Amendment protections,” said Corn-Revere, and this lawsuit was an “especially egregious example of government overreach” and none of the plaintiffs’ claims “fell within any exception to the First Amendment.”

On Monday, Trump’s attorneys Edward Paltzik and Alan Ostergren filed a Notice of Dismissal 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.

According to NPR investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach, legal counsel for Selzer told him on Monday that there was no settlement, suggesting that Selzer had not paid any money to Trump or the other plaintiffs to drop the case.

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.”

This is a breaking news story and has been updated.