Sarah Palin’s Defamation Suit Against NYT Gets Hearing

Courthouse News reports:

Some three years after Sarah Palin sued The New York Times over an editorial about toxic political rhetoric, the paper’s attorney told a federal judge that the former Alaska governor’s hunt for evidence has turned up empty. “Governor Palin does not have one iota of evidence that the allegations are true,” Time attorney Jay Brown told a judge during a Monday afternoon telephone conference.

In June 2017, the Times ran an editorial titled “America’s Lethal Politics” connecting the nation’s pattern of mass shootings to overheated political rhetoric, citing the shooting rampage by Jared Lee Loughner some six years earlier as one example. Though the Times initially found a “clear” and “direct” connection between Palin and the Loughner shooting, it quickly issued a lengthy correction noting “no such link was established.”

Palin’s suit, which was revived last year on procedural grounds by an appellate court, hinges on whether she can prove the New York Times deliberately lied about her rather than making an editorial misjudgment. Hit the link for much more.