FIRST ON FOX: President-elect Donald Trump is suing the Des Moines Register and its top pollster J. Ann Selzer for “brazen election interference” and fraud over its final 2024 presidential poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris leading him in Iowa, despite his ultimate victory in the state by more than 13 percentage points, Fox News Digital has learned. 

The lawsuit was filed Monday night in Polk County, Iowa under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act and related provisions. It says it seeks “accountability for brazen election interference committed by” the Des Moines Register (DMR) and Selzer “in favor of now-defeated former Democrat candidate Kamala Harris through use of a leaked and manipulated Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll conducted by Selzer and S&C and published by DMR and Gannett in the Des Moines Register on Nov. 2, 2024.” The lawsuit is also against the parent company of the Des Moines Register, Gannett, which also owns other publications, including USA Today.

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“Contrary to reality and defying credulity, defendants’ Harris Poll was published three days before Election Day and purported to show Harris leading President Trump in Iowa by three points; President Trump ultimately won Iowa by over thirteen points,” the lawsuit states. 

Selzer released her final Des Moines Register-sponsored poll of Iowa just three days before the election, on Nov. 2, showing Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by three points. That shock poll showed a seven-point shift from Trump to Harris from September, when he had a four-point lead over the vice president in the same poll. 

But Trump ultimately beat Harris in Iowa by more than 13 percentage points. 

Selzer’s poll, though, had been hyped up by the media ahead of the elections, as her polling predictions in previous elections had been historically accurate. 

Trump attorneys said Selzer’s prediction of Harris’ three point lead in “deep-red Iowa was not reality, it was election-interfering fiction.” 

Trump attorneys said Selzer had “prided herself on a mainstream reputation for accuracy despite several far less publicized egregious polling misses in favor of Democrats” and said she “would have the public believe it was merely a coincidence that one of the worst polling misses of her career came just days before the most consequential election in memory, was leaked and happened to go against the Republican candidate.” 

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“The Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election,” the lawsuit states, adding that “defendants and their cohorts in the Democrat Party hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.” 

“Instead, the November 5 election was a monumental victory for President Trump in both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote, an overwhelming mandate for his America First principles, and the consignment of the radical socialist agenda to the dustbin of history.” 

The lawsuit notes that Selzer, after more than 35 years in the industry, “retired in disgrace from polling less than two weeks after this embarrassing rout.” 

Trump lawyers argued that “left-wing pollsters have attempted to influence electoral outcomes through manipulated polls that have unacceptable error rates and are not grounded in widely accepted polling methodologies.” 

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“While Selzer is not the only pollster to engage in this corrupt practice, she had a huge platform and following and, thus, a significant and impactful opportunity to deceive voters,” the lawsuit states. “As Selzer knows, this type of manipulation creates a narrative of inevitability for Democrat candidates, increases enthusiasm among Democrats, compels Republicans to divert campaign time and money to areas in which they are ahead, and deceives the public into believing that Democrat candidates are performing better than they really are.” 

The lawsuit states that Democrats’ “need for fake polling was even more acute than usual in the 2024 Election, given Harris’s many fatal weaknesses as a candidate and lack of appeal to critical swaths of the traditional Democrat base.” 

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, on Monday, Dec. 16, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla.  (AP/Evan Vucci)

Trump attorneys are suing under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, alleging that defendants “engaged in an ‘unfair act or practice’ 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.’” 

They also said consumers were “badly deceived and misled as to the actual position of the respective candidates in the Iowa Presidential race.” 

“Moreover, President Trump, the Trump 2024 Campaign, and other Republicans were forced to divert enormous campaign and financial resources to Iowa based on the deceptive Harris Poll,” the lawsuit states, adding that consumers of the Des Moines Register and Iowans who contributed to Trump’s 2024 campaign were “similarly deceived.” 

Trump is demanding actual damages upon trial of the case; statutory damages three times the actual damages suffered; an order enjoining defendants’ “ongoing deceptive and misleading acts and practices relating to the Harris Poll and compelling defendants to disclose all information upon which they relied to engage in the deceptive and misleading acts relating to the Harris Poll; attorneys’ fees and costs associated with the case; and any other relief as deemed just and proper by the court. 

The lawsuit Monday night comes just hours after the president-elect said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago that he planned to sue the Des Moines Register and Selzer. 

The lawsuit comes days after ABC News and its top anchor George Stephanopoulos reached a settlement with Trump in his defamation suit, resulting in the network paying the president-elect $15 million. 

The settlement was publicly filed on Saturday, revealing the agreement to avoid a costly trial. According to the settlement, ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past.” 

Additionally, the network will pay $1 million in Trump’s attorney fees. 

Stephanopoulos and ABC News also had to issue statements of “regret” as an editor’s note at the bottom of a March 10, 2024, online article, about comments made earlier this year that prompted Trump to file the defamation lawsuit. The note reads, “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”

George Stephanopoulos speaks during ABC’s “This Week.” (ABC/Paula Lobo via Getty Images)

ABC News said the network was “pleased” to have concluded the case.

“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” an ABC News spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

The Des Moines Register lawsuit and the ABC News settlement come after a string of legal victories for Trump and his legal team, coordinated by senior legal adviser Boris Epshteyn.

Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan recently granted Special Counsel Jack Smith’s recent request to dismiss his case against Trump related to the 2020 election. Smith also tossed his appeal in the classified records case on Monday after a federal judge dismissed the charges altogether in July, ruling that he was unlawfully appointed as special counsel.

In New York v. Trump, Judge Juan Merchan granted Trump’s request to file a motion to dismiss the charges stemming from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case and removed the sentencing date for the president-elect from the schedule. 

Merchan on Monday night rejected Trump’s July request to overturn the guilty verdict based on presidential immunity. Merchan has not yet ruled on Trump’s official motion to dismiss the charges altogether. 

Trump is also suing CBS News for $10 billion in damages, stating the network practiced “deceptive conduct” for the purpose of election interference in its interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris.

President Biden made history last week when he commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 prisoners and pardoned another 39 people – sparking mixed reactions from lawmakers, including Democrats, who noted that his actions far outpace the clemency actions of any other U.S. president serving his first term in office.

In a statement last week announcing the new clemency actions, Biden said America “was built on the promise of possibility and second chances.”

“As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for nonviolent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses,” Biden said.

Biden’s lengthy list sparked mixed reaction from some lawmakers and criminal justice reform advocates, who questioned the administration’s decision-making in determining prisoners that were eligible for clemency. 

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The Biden administration told CNN that the decisions on who could be included were not made on an individual basis, but rather, was a “uniform” decision granted to people with a record of good behavior while on house arrest. 

That includes former Illinois city comptroller Rita Crundwell, who, in 2012, pleaded guilty to a nearly $55 million embezzlement scheme, and former Pennsylvania judge Michael Conahan, who was convicted in 2011 for his role in a “Kids-for-Cash” scheme, in which children were sent to for-profit detention centers in return for millions of dollars of kickbacks from the private prisons. 

A full list of individuals included in Biden’s most recent clemency action can be found on the Justice Department website. The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News’s request for comment on its decision-making in issuing presidential pardons.

Biden’s decision to include Conahan on his list of prisoners granted clemency was sharply criticized Friday by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who had been considered on Vice President Kamala Harris’ short-list for running mate earlier this year.

Shapiro said Friday he thinks Biden got it “absolutely wrong” in granting clemency to Conahan, saying the decision has “created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania.” 

“Some children took their lives because of this. Families were torn apart,” Shapiro said of the for-profit detention center scandal.

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Joe and son Hunter Biden taking a walk. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Before leaving office in 2017, President Barack Obama granted clemency to 1,927 individuals during his two terms as president – the highest total of any modern president going back to former president Harry Truman, also a Democrat, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Justice Department data. 

Truman, who served as president from 1945 to 1953, granted clemency to 2,044 individuals during his two terms in office – slightly outpacing Obama’s list. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected president four times, granted a total of 3,687 pardons, sentence commutations and other acts of clemency during his time in the White House. After Roosevelt died in office during his fourth term, the U.S. Constitution was ratified to limit all future presidents to two terms in office.

Others noted the differences between individuals included on Biden’s clemency list and those who saw reduced or pardoned sentences under Obama.

The vast majority of Obama’s clemency actions focused on commuting the sentences of federal inmates who met certain criteria outlined under his administration’s Clemency Initiative, a program that ended in 2017 when Trump took office.

But critics have noted the stark differences between the number of individuals selected for clemency under each president – and any relationship to a sitting commander in chief.

During his presidency, Barack Obama granted clemency to 1,927 individuals. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The Obama administration, for example, largely focused its commutations and reductions on nonviolent drug offenders, including many who had been sentenced under mandatory minimum sentencing laws passed by Congress in the late 1980s. 

These clemency grants came under sharp criticism by some Republicans, who accused Obama of imposing his political will to end certain mandatory minimum sentences – which many argued at the time minimized the “lawmaking authority” of Congress.

But Biden’s clemency grants also far outpace his predecessor, Donald Trump, during his first term in office. 

Between 2017 and 2021, Trump granted just 143 pardons and 93 sentence commutations – amounting to just 2% of the clemency applications that his administration received, according to available Justice Department data. 

Some noted that the individuals selected for clemency during Trump’s first term also appear to bear a very different list of criteria compared to former presidents.

An analysis conducted by Lawfare found that 29 of the 34 pardons granted by Trump were not based on recommendations of the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney. 

Such recommendations are not necessary for clemency, but presidents in recent memory have relied on the DOJ for input into worthy recipients for pardons and commutations.

WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a red-state constitutional challenge to California’s special authority to fight air pollution.

Over a dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas, the justices turned away an appeal from Ohio and 16 other conservative states, which asked the court to rule “the Golden State is not a golden child.”

While Monday’s brief order closes the door on a constitutional challenge to California’s anti-pollution standards, the court on Friday cleared the way for a different, more targeted legal challenge.

The oil and gas industry is suing over the state’s “zero emissions” goals for new vehicles, arguing California’s special authority to fight air pollution does not extend to greenhouse gases and global warming.

A lower court had dismissed that suit on the grounds the oil producers had no standing to sue. Their complaint was they would sell less fuel in the future.

On Friday, the justices agreed to reconsider that ruling early next year. They could clear the way for the suit to proceed.

Monday’s related order narrows the legal grounds that the industry can use to challenge California’s rule, assuming it eventually wins standing.

The incoming Trump administration is likely to intervene on the side of the challengers.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar had urged the court to turn down both appeals. They said California’s strict emissions standards are designed to fight smog and other air pollution as well as greenhouse gases.

They argued that Congress had ample authority under the Constitution to set special rules for problems in different states.

Since early in American history, they said Congress approved special customs duties for some states or rules involving tribes relations.

In challenging California’s authority, Ohio’s Atty. Gen. David Yost pointed to the court’s 2013 decision that struck down part of the Voting Rights Act on the grounds it violated the principle of equal state sovereignty.

When Congress adopted national air pollution standards in 1967, it said California could go further because it was already enforcing strict standards to combat the state’s worst-in-the-nation problem with smog.

Ohio and red states say this special authority violates “core constitutional principles because no state is more equal than the others. And Congress does not have the general power to elevate one state above the others….Yet in the Clean Air Act, Congress elevated California above all the other states by giving to the Golden State alone the power to pass certain environmental laws.”

Without commenting, the justices said they would not hear the constitutional claim.

The Environmental Defense Fund hailed the court’s announcement.

“California’s clean car standards have successfully helped reduce the dangerous soot, smog, and climate pollution that put all people at risk, while also turbocharging clean technologies and job creation,” said Alice Henderson, lead counsel for its clean-air policy group.