Last January, Dennis Donnelly, a longtime Des Moines Register subscriber, sued the newspaper and pollster Ann Selzer, alleging that they had committed multiple torts by conducting and publicizing a poll suggesting that the presidential contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in Iowa was much closer than expected. On Thursday, a federal judge in Iowa dismissed that lawsuit with prejudice, deeming it inconsistent with the First Amendment. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger also concluded that Donnelly had failed to properly plead any of his claims.
That decision in Donnelly v. Des Moines Register and Tribune Co. does not bode well for a similar lawsuit that Trump filed against Selzer and the Register last December. "A party cannot evade First Amendment scrutiny" by "simply labeling an action one for 'fraud,'" Ebinger notes. Yet that is exactly what Trump is trying to do when he portrays "fake news" as a form of consumer fraud.
