An Iowa judge dismissed President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against a pollster and The Des Moines Register on Sept. 23, finding that an inaccurate poll published three days before the 2024 election was protected speech and didn’t violate the state’s consumer fraud law.

Trump’s legal team plans to appeal the ruling, a spokesman said on the morning of Sept. 24.

The newspaper published Ann Selzer’s poll on Nov. 2, showing Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3 percentage points. Trump won the state 56 percent to 43 percent. His lawsuit claimed that Selzer acted with “corrupt intent” to help Harris.

The president was joined by U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and former Iowa state Sen. Brad Zaun, both Republicans, in the lawsuit against Selzer, her polling company, and the newspaper and its parent company. They alleged that the misleading coverage diminished their reputations and valuable time and cost them in campaign funds and resources.

The poll also predicted a Democratic victory in Miller-Meeks’s district. Although it did not include Zaun’s race, he blamed the poll’s impact for his loss.

In the ruling, Iowa District Court Judge Scott Beattie found that the Iowa poll and its reporting were fully protected political speech under the First Amendment.

Beattie also found that the readers of The Des Moines Register and Selzer’s polls didn’t suffer a loss.

“Election damages are in any event speculative,” Beattie wrote in the ruling. “It is a claim to have been told the truth. Lying is not fraud, because lying by itself ‘lacks an essential element of a fraud claim: proof of detrimental reliance or actual harm to the plaintiff.’”

The judge also called the case extraordinary, saying that allowing the lawsuit and its claims to proceed could have a “chilling effect” that could discourage others from reporting on and debating public affairs.

Beattie said he would have dismissed the case even if he accepted the president’s claims that the poll was intentionally skewed and its results fabricated because the lawsuit did not meet the legal requirements for fraud or consumer deception.

The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, permanently closing the case and ending the legal dispute.

A spokesman for Trump’s legal team told The Epoch Times that the president plans to take the case to the Iowa Supreme Court.

“President Trump is committed to holding responsible those who traffic in deception and fake news,” a spokesman said in an emailed statement on the morning of Sept. 24.

“The Des Moines Register and Gannett knowingly ran a phony poll from the now-disgraced Democrat pollster Ann Selzer in an unlawful attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election and to defraud Americans into believing Kamala Harris was winning the state of Iowa and nationwide, mere hours before she lost Iowa and the overall election by huge margins.

“This scam was designed to damage President Trump’s dominant campaign in the final days of the race. Such fraud cannot be allowed to stand.”

Selzer, represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said there was no guarantee the poll was correct.

“Polling is a social science, not clairvoyance, and no responsible pollster can guarantee an election outcome,” Selzer said in a statement.

“What we can guarantee is that we will follow the data wherever it leads, even when the results are uncomfortable or unexpected.

“I am grateful that Judge Beattie’s ruling recognizes these principles and reaffirms the fundamental freedom to pursue and publish the truth without political interference.”

President Donald Trump arrives to deliver remarks on the economy in Clive, Iowa, on Jan. 27, 2026. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s chief counsel, Bob Corn-Revere, represented Selzer pro bono.

“We’re pleased that the court recognized what we’ve said all along: This lawsuit was laughable from the beginning and never should have been brought,” Corn-Revere said. “The First Amendment does not allow anyone in government, least of all the president, to punish people under the banner of ‘fake news.’”

USA Today Co., formerly known as Gannett and owner of The Des Moines Register, also called the ruling a “victory for the First Amendment.”