Trump sues Des Moines Register over poll that showed him losing

President-elect Donald Trump has sued the Des Moines Register and its former highly respected pollster J. Ann Selzer over a surprising poll released three days before the election that had Vice President Kamala Harris leading in the Republican-controlled state.

It is highly unusual for a politician to take legal action in response to an unfavorable poll.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Polk County, Iowa, alleges that the poll, which was about 16 percentage points off from the election result, amounted to “election interference.” It argues that the newspaper and pollster “hoped that the … [poll] would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris” in the last week of the election campaign, in what Trump’s attorneys claim was a violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.