A federal judge on Monday tossed out Sarah Palin’s libel case against the New York Times.
The lawsuit centered around a New York Times op-ed that falsely implicated Palin’s political action committee (PAC) for “political incitement” in the shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords.
In June 2017, the same day that a leftist shot Rep. Steve Scalise during a congressional baseball practice, the Times ran an op-ed headlined “America’s Lethal Politics.” The piece falsely claimed that Palin’s PAC had shared a map with 20 Democratic lawmakers, including Giffords, in “stylized crosshairs” prior to her shooting. They claimed that “the link to political incitement was clear.”
Palin says that former editorial page editor James Bennet defamed her by publishing the claim.
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U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff, a Clinton appointee tossed out the case and said Palin’s lawyers did not present sufficient evidence against the New York Times.
Politico reported:
A judge has ruled that a libel lawsuit former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin filed against the New York Times over a 2017 editorial should be thrown out because her lawyers failed to produce evidence that the newspaper knew what it wrote about her was false or acted recklessly towards indications it was false.
The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff came as a Manhattan jury was deliberating on Palin’s suit, which claimed the Times defamed her by unfairly linking her to a 2011 shooting spree in Arizona that killed six people and gravely wounded then-Rep. Gabby Giffords.
Rakoff said he would continue to allow the jury to deliberate to a verdict and added that he considers an appeal in the case to be inevitable.