Sarah Palin back in court with opportunity to take the New York Times to cleaners over false report

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) is back in court and ready to hold the New York Times accountable over an error-laden 2017 editorial that falsely linked her to a mass shooting.

Reuters indicated that opening statements will kick off Tuesday morning before U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, the Clinton appointee who improperly dismissed Palin's lawsuit in 2017 and tainted the jury the second time around.

Background

On June 14, 2017, an anti-Trump leftist from Illinois took aim at House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and several other Republican lawmakers who were practicing for a charity baseball game. Alexandria Police officers and U.S. Capitol Police officers were able to permanently neutralize the shooter but not before he hit Scalise and three others.

The New York Times editorial board rushed to exploit the shooting for political purposes.

'No such link was established.'

Just hours after the first shots were fired, the liberal paper suggested the attack was likely evidence of the supposed ease with which Americans can get their hands on guns. The board also insinuated that Republicans helped set the stage for such an event with heated political rhetoric, accusing Sarah Palin's political action committee of directly inciting a 2011 mass shooting that left former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) injured.

The editorial board stated:

In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.

Contrary to the Times' assertion, there was no clear link to political incitement — something the paper already knew and was quickly reminded of by some of its own writers. In fact, the Times previously reported that "we have no idea" whether Loughner saw the PAC's map and that he was "likely insane, with no coherent ideological agenda." Furthermore, Palin's PAC did not superimpose "stylized cross hairs" on Giffords and other Democrats.

The liberal paper subsequently issued a correction admitting as much:

An editorial on Thursday about the shooting of Representative Steve Scalise incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords. In fact, no such link was established. The editorial also incorrectly described a map distributed by a political action committee before that shooting. It depicted electoral districts, not individual Democratic lawmakers, beneath stylized cross hairs.

Palin, evidently unwilling to let the Times off so easily, filed a lawsuit later that month.

The former governor's complaint claimed that the Times used its false assertion about Mrs. Palin "as an artifice to exploit the shooting that occurred on June 14, 2017."

"As the public backlash over The Times' malicious column mounted, it responded by making edits and 'corrections' to its fabricated story, along with half-hearted Twitter apologies — none of which sufficiently corrected the falsehoods that the paper published," said the complaint. "In fact, none mentioned Mrs. Palin or acknowledged that Mrs. Palin did not incite a deranged man to commit murder."

A dismissive Clinton judge

Rakoff dismissed Palin's original lawsuit in August 2017 on the basis of an evidentiary hearing where then-Times editor James Bennet was the sole witness.

Two years later, a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Rakoff had "erred in relying on acts outside the pleadings to dismiss the complaint" and "impermissibly credited Bennet's testimony and weighed that evidence in holding that Palin had not adequately alleged actual malice."

The federal appellate court noted further that Palin's amended complaint "plausibly states a claim for defamation and may proceed to full discovery."

Despite his chastisement, Rakoff wasn't done pressing his thumb on the scale for the apparent benefit of the Times.

The trial was held in 2022. While the jury was still deliberating, Rakoff announced he was going to throw out Palin's lawsuit, indicating that no reasonable jury could find that the liberal paper and Bennet acted with malice, reported LawandCrime.com.

'The district court's Rule 50 ruling improperly intruded on the province of the jury.'

"I think that there is one essential element that plaintiff has not carried its burden with—the portion of actual malice relating to belief in falsity or reckless disregard in falsity," said Rakoff. "The law sets a very high standard. The court finds that that standard has not been met."

Despite ruling that the lawsuit should be thrown out and effectively telling the jury what to think, the Clinton judge permitted the jury to go through the motions and come to a verdict. The jury ultimately found the Times not liable.

Palin once again appealed the dismissal of her lawsuit, and once again the 2nd Circuit took issue with Rakoff's approach, granting the former governor a new trial.

"While the jury was deliberating, the district court dismissed the case again — this time under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50," wrote the circuit judges noted in their August 2024 ruling. "We conclude that the district court's Rule 50 ruling improperly intruded on the province of the jury by making credibility determinations, weighing evidence, and ignoring facts or inferences that a reasonable juror could plausibly have found to support Palin's case."

'Trust in the media has declined.'

The appeals court noted that other "major issues at trial — specifically, the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction, a legally erroneous response to a mid-deliberation jury question, and jurors learning during deliberations of the district court's Rule 50 dismissal ruling — impugn the reliability of that verdict."

Back in court

Rakoff and lawyers for both sides reportedly picked five women and four men Monday for the nine-person jury.

Rakoff told lawyers ahead of jury selection on Monday that the appeals court "seems to think I got it wrong in a lot of ways," reported the Associated Press. The judge noted further that he had gone "back and read the entire opinion, painful though it was."

While the Times is going before the same Clinton judge who treated it favorably in the past, there appears to be some apprehension at the paper this time around. A pair of Times writers noted Sunday:

Trust in the media has declined, and the Manhattan jury pool may have shifted to the right. A number of defamation lawsuits in the past three years have resulted in eye-popping payments, raising the stakes in the Palin case. And the retrial comes as President Trump and his administration have attacked the notion of an independent press, deploying litigation, investigations and other strong-arm tactics against news organizations.

RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah, told the paper, "It may prove to be a real barometer of the changing public attitude about the press and the changing appetite for American press freedom."

Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for the Times, stated, "We're confident we will prevail and intend to vigorously defend the case."

Kenneth Turkel, a lawyer for Palin, apparently left the courthouse Monday without commenting on Palin's effort to hold the Times to account for at least one of its many distortions of the truth.

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