Trump avoids Obama-appointed judge as suit moves to Iowa State Court

President Donald Trump successfully got his lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register to land in Iowa State Court last week with “good strategy” by his legal team, according to attorney Danny Karon. 

Trump’s legal team, which has accused the defendants of “brazen election interference” with their final 2024 Iowa presidential poll that showed him trailing Democrat Kamala Harris, originally requested the case be moved to Iowa State Court in May after the defendants “removed” the case to federal court. A federal judge denied the request at the time, but the Obama-appointed judge was overruled by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit on Friday. 

Karon, author of the recently published book “Your Love lovable lawyer’s guide to legal wellness,” believes Trump’s team played it perfectly. 

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“The federal judge was terrible for him. It was an Obama appointee,” Karon told Fox News Digital.

Karon said the practice is sometimes referred to as “forum shopping,” but he simply feels it was “good strategy” by Trump’s legal team.  

“You want to find a judge where you’re going to have a fair shake, or a good shake, or better shake, call it what you want, but you don’t want a judge who’s going to work against you,” Karon said. 

“He liked the state court judge, didn’t like the federal judge. When the defendants removed him to federal court, he wanted really bad to get it back,” Karon continued. “Now he’s where he wants to be.”

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Karon, who practiced class action law for years, found it interesting that Trump sued for consumer fraud, since that is typically a claim that a product was defective or fraudulently represented. 

“Trump said, ‘You know what? The newspaper was the product that was sold. It had a fraud in it, which was this ginned-up poll, it wasn’t true. It wasn’t accurate. It was deceptive and people were damaged, namely me,’” Karon said. “His damages are, he had to spend all this money from the campaign to fix this problem, to take it to Iowa.” 

Karon expects Selzer and The Des Moines Register to file a motion to dismiss.

“If the motion to dismiss is denied, you get into discovery, which is ugly and hairy and expensive and takes forever and that’s where all the hard work comes and that often where cases settle,” Karon said.  

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Trump’s legal team celebrated the ruling. 

“[The] just and appropriate ruling by the 8th Circuit ensures that President Trump’s powerhouse case focused on the fake election interfering polls conducted and denominated by J. Ann Selzer, The Des Moines Register and its corporate owner Gannett will be litigated in Iowa State Court where it belongs,” a spokesman for Trump’s legal team told Fox News Digital on Friday. 

“These defendants have repeatedly engaged in unlawful gamesmanship to avoid State Court, and that ends today,” the spokesman continued. “President Trump will continue to hold those who traffic in fake news, lies and smears to account.”

Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), who represents Selzer, also issued a statement last week after Trump’s victory. 

“The 8th Circuit ruling was focused entirely on a technical point of civil procedure and said nothing about the merits of the case. This case is every bit as frivolous today as it was yesterday, and that fact will be borne out in whatever forum it is finally resolved,” Corn-Revere told Fox News Digital. 

Lark-Marie Antón, a spokesperson for The Des Moines Register’s parent company, Gannett, believes the case belongs in federal court. 

“We are assessing the court’s decision. Given the nature of the case and that it involves the President of the United States as a plaintiff, we continue to believe the federal courts are the most appropriate forum for this lawsuit. In the event the suit is heard by the state courts of Iowa, we have confidence the matter will be adjudicated fairly,” Antón told Fox News Digital. 

The lawsuit was originally filed in December in Polk County, Iowa, and sought what it calls “accountability for brazen election interference committed by” The Des Moines Register 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” published Nov. 2, 2024.

“The Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election,” the lawsuit stated at the time, 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.” 

FORMER POLLSTER ANN SELZER HITS BACK AT CRITICISMS OVER IOWA POLL: ‘THEY ARE ACCUSING ME OF A CRIME’

Selzer released her final Des Moines Register-sponsored poll showing Harris leading Trump by three points in Iowa just three days before the election. 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.

Selzer’s poll was hyped up by the media in the days leading up to the election as her polling predictions had been historically accurate. Many suggested it implied a monumental shift in Midwest support for Harris in a red state, but the poll turned out to be way off.

Trump thumped Harris in Iowa by more than 13 percentage points, the third straight time he’d won the state and the first time any candidate had won there by double digits since 1980.

Shortly after the election, Selzer announced she was done with election polling and moving on to “other ventures.”

Fox News Digital’s Lindsay Kornick and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.