A federal judge has rejected President Trump’s attempt to withdraw his lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer, the Des Moines Register and others over the final Iowa Poll before the 2024 election. Trump’s attorneys filed a Notice of Voluntary Withdrawal in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa on Monday, asking Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger to dismiss the lawsuit “without prejudice.” Doing so would allow Trump to refile the lawsuit in the future, which he immediately did. Trump refiled his lawsuit against Selzer, her polling firm Selzer & Co., the Register and its parent company Gannett in state court later on Monday, without waiting to see if the federal court would allow him to withdraw.
Attorneys for the Register/Gannett and Selzer argued in their response to Trump’s motion that the court could not grant Trump’s grant request because the case was not currently before Ebinger — it was before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeal, which was scheduled to hear Trump’s appeal of a decision Ebinger made in May. Because the case is on appeal, federal court rules require Trump to file his request to withdraw with the appeals courts, or to have all parties in the case stipulate that they agree to have the case withdrawn. None of the defendants agree to Trump’s move.
The attorneys for the defendants also cited appellate court rulings prohibiting a party in a lawsuit withdrawing the case “simply to avoid an adverse decision or seek a more favorable forum.”
Trump’s surprise legal maneuver on Monday was clearly an attempt to “seek a more favorable forum,” by having the case heard in state court. The then-president elect originally filed his lawsuit in Polk County District Court in December. Since it was published last year on Nov. 2, Trump has repeatedly alleged the Iowa Poll conducted by Selzer & Co. and published by the Register, which showed Kamala Harris leading him in Iowa by 3 percentage points, was the product of a conspiracy to illegally interfere with the Nov. 5 election and stop Trump from winning Iowa and being elected president.
Even after Trump won the 2024 election, he continued to promote his conspiracy theory. On Dec. 16, during his rambling first news conference the election, Trump said the poll “was fraud and it was election interference.” The president-elect rambled a bit more about the poll, Selzer and the Register, before telling the reporters gathered at Mar-a-Lago, “We’ll be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow.” Later that day, after the Polk County courts were closed, Trump filed his lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleged Selzer, her firm, the Register and Gannett had violated the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act “through use of a leaked and manipulated Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll.” The filing did not contain any evidence of fraud, and Trump hasn’t provided any evidence to back up his conspiracy theory at any point in the eight months he has been promoting it. The lawsuit also didn’t contain any evidence of actual harm suffered by Trump because of the erroneous poll and it would be hard to do so. He was, after all, elected president, and he carried Iowa by 13 percentage points.
The complaint filed in December listed one plaintiff, Donald J. Trump, “a resident of the State of Florida.” Since Trump wasn’t, and had never been, a resident of Iowa, it meant there was a question of differing jurisdictions — Iowa and Florida — and lawyers for the defendants immediately responded by arguing that meant the case belonged in federal court, not state court.
In his original complaint, Trump’s attorneys had tried to overcome the problem posed by Trump’s lack of a substantive connection to Iowa by claiming, “President Trump, together with all Iowa and American voters, is a consumer within the meaning of the [Iowa Consumer Fraud Act].” The Polk County court didn’t buy that argument, and the case was transferred to federal district court.
On Jan. 31, Trump filed an amended complaint in an attempt to get the case sent back to state court. In an effort to create an Iowa connection, Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks and former state senator Brad Zaun joined the lawsuit as co-plaintiffs. In May, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger rejected Trump’s attempt to game the system by adding Miller-Meeks and Zaun.
“Plaintiffs provide no legitimate rationale for Zaun and Miller-Meeks to join a federal lawsuit only to immediately move to remand [the case to state court],” Ebinger said in her decision. “Zaun and Miller-Meeks could have sued defendants in state court without fear of removal. Thus, the only apparent reason to have joined Trump’s lawsuit is to destroy diversity jurisdiction.”
Trump, Miller-Meeks and Zaun appealed Ebinger’s decision to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is that appeal that is still pending, and because the case is currently before the appeals court, Judge Ebinger rejected the filing by the attorneys for Trump, Miller-Meeks and Zaun asking to withdraw the case.
“Because Trump’s appeal confers jurisdiction to the Eighth Circuit over aspects of this case, Trump must first dismiss the appeal before voluntarily dismissing the district court case,” the judge wrote in her ruling handed down late Wednesday afternoon.
Even if Trump eventually succeeds in withdrawing his federal lawsuit, it’s now unlikely to give him the advantage in state court he might have had if Monday’s attempt succeeded. That’s because Iowa’s new anti-SLAPP law took effect Tuesday.
SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuits against public participation, meaning lawsuits of little or no merit designed to harass a person or organization in order to stop or discourage them from speaking out on a public issue. Trump’s lawsuit appears to fall into that category. Not only does it fail to show harm, it stretches the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act to cover a flawed piece of reported news, something that’s never been done before, in an attempt to get around the First Amendment guarantee of press freedom.
The new Iowa law will make it easier to get a SLAPP claim dismissed early in the legal process. But the law only applies to lawsuits filed after July 1 this year. That’s why Trump tried his surprise legal maneuver of attempting to withdraw the federal lawsuit and refile the state one on June 30.
Ebinger’s rejection on Wednesday of Trump’s Notice of Voluntary Withdrawal came just one day after a settlement in another meritless lawsuit filed by Trump against a media company.
On Tuesday, Paramount Global, the corporation that owns CBS, announced it had agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit he filed over a segment the news show 60 Minutes aired in October. The segment was an interview with Kamala Harris, and immediately after it aired, Trump began making the baseless claim that the way the interview was edited constituted an act of fraud and an attempt at election interference. On Oct. 31, Trump filed a lawsuit against CBS, demanding $10 billion in damages.
Trump filed his case in the federal court in the Northern District of Texas, despite the fact he doesn’t live in Texas and neither CBS nor Paramount are located in Texas. But by filing in the district he did, Trump was certain to have the case heard by Matthew Kacsmaryk, a federal judge known for his extreme rightwing views and loosely reasoned decisions, who was appointed to the bench by Trump.
But even having Kacsmaryk as the judge didn’t mean Trump would win. No one except Trump’s most dedicated supporters and people employed by him thought the lawsuit had any merit. But top executives at Paramount are trying to close a deal to sell the company, and that sale will have to be approved by the Trump administration. Rather than defend CBS in court in what should be an easy win, Paramount decided to pay Trump $16 million, which is supposed to be used to establish a future Donald J. Trump presidential library.
“What seemed possible — but hard to believe — before President Trump took office once more has now taken shape: A number of corporate and individual owners of media that promise to hold power to account have instead bowed to it,” NPR media reporter David Folkenflik wrote after Paramount’s announcement. “So too have the chiefs of two major social media platforms — among the richest people on the planet.”
In a statement on Monday after Trump filed the motion to withdraw, Register spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton said Gannett and the Register will not back down in the face of Trump’s threats, as other media organizations have.
“The Des Moines Register will continue to resist President Trump’s litigation gamesmanship and believes that regardless of the forum it will be successful in defending its rights under the First Amendment.”
