PRESS RELATIONS: In a further indication that Donald Trump plans to fight and diminish the free press beyond just calling it “fake news,” the President-elect filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register newspaper, pollster J. Ann Selzer, and the Gannett  newspaper chain because they published a poll wrongly predicting that Kamala Harris would win Iowa in the presidential election.

  Trump only a few days ago settled a defamation suit against ABC News for $16 million after the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, decided not to fight it.

  The latest is not a defamation suit. Demonstrating that Trump is reaching to find ways to intimidate the press, he’s suing the Des Moines Register under Iowa’s Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deception when advertising or selling merchandise. The President-elect claims that the poll was intentionally skewed to help Harris in the election, although there is no evidence of that. The poll had Harris winning Iowa by three points and Trump ended up winning by 13.

  Trump’s filing sounds like he wrote it himself: “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 Register and Gannett say they will fight the suit with everything they’ve got.

ENDLESS APPEAL: Lawyers for Donald Trump have also filed a claim that there was “grave juror misconduct” in their client’s criminal conviction on 34 counts of business fraud. “The jury in this case was not anywhere near fair and impartial” they wrote in a December 3 letter publicly released with heavy redactions.

  The lawyers claim that the misconduct was “extensive and pervasive.” The letter evidently presents detailed argument, but all of it is blacked out.

  A Trump spokesman implied in a statement that one juror may have expressed some political leanings during the trial, contending that “partisan political motivations infected nearly every aspect of this witch hunt, including the jury room.”

  While conceding that “allegations of juror misconduct should be thoroughly investigated,” Judge Juan Merchan wrote in a letter to the defense and prosecutors, that, “This court is prohibited from deciding such claims on the basis of mere hearsay and conjecture.”

  The lawyers’ letter also argues that the convictions should be thrown out because Trump enjoys presidential immunity, but Judge Merchan has already dismissed that, noting that the offenses occurred before Trump was president and involved the personal matter of hush money payments to a porn star.

CRIME BEAT: Twenty-six-year-old Luigi Mangione of Baltimore was indicted in New York yesterday for 1^st and 2^nd degree murder for the sidewalk assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The 1^st degree charge labels him a terrorist. 

  Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said at a press conference that, 

“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation.” New York does not have the death sentence and Mangione faces life without parole if convicted.

DROPPED: As an increasing number of wildfires and natural disasters damage and destroy American homes, insurance companies have been dropping customers and pulling out of threatened areas, The NY Times reports. Heavily affected areas are northern California, the tornado-swept Midwest, and the Atlantic coast from North Carolina down through Florida.

  Lack of insurance lowers property values and makes it impossible to get a mortgage, but the Times reports that 1.9 million homeowners have been dropped since 2018. 

THE WAR ROOM: North Korean soldiers fighting in support of Russia have begun to take heavy casualties, according  both Ukraine and the Pentagon. As many as 30 North Koreans were killed or wounded in recent days during assaults on three villages.

  The Ukrainians say the Koreans have engaged in “human wave” assaults exposing them to getting mowed down. They say they have drone footage of at least 20 North Korean bodies on the ground.

   A Ukrainian military blogger said, “The enemy managed to reach the Ukrainian positions due to their good physical training, fast movement, and ignorance of their own losses; no evacuation of the wounded and dead was carried out during the assault.”

  What North Korea gets for the expense of lives billions of dollars’ worth of food, oil, cash, and advanced weapons systems from Russia. 

THE SPIN RACK: The Electoral College voted yesterday, officially electing Donald Trump to the presidency, 312-226 over Kamala Harris. Eight of the electors from Michigan and Nevada are under indictment for having been  “fake electors” in the scheme to reverse Trump’s loss in 2020. — Russian authorities arrested a 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan in connection with the bomb assassination in Moscow of a senior general. — Svetlana Dali, the Russian-born woman who was a stowaway on a flight to Paris and was brought back to the US, was caught attempting to flee to Canada on a bus after cutting off her ankle monitor. — The suspect in the Gilgo Beach serial murders on Long Island, Rex Heuermann, has been charged with a seventh murder. He was named in the killing of Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old Philadelphia mother who was working as an escort.

BELOW THE FOLD: Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 84, was wearing her signature high heels when she fell in Luxembourg last weekend, breaking a hip. Ever the trooper, she then got up, dusted herself off, and posed for a group picture … in her heels.

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