Sarah Palin said at her defamation trial against the New York Times that she felt 'powerless' after a 2017 editorial incorrectly linked the former Alaska governor and Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate to a mass shooting six years earlier.
Sarah Palin, 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate and former Alaska governor, arrives with former NHL hockey player Ron Duguay during her defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, at the United States Courthouse in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., February 10, 2022.
But under cross-examination by Times lawyer David Axelrod, Palin struggled to provide specific examples about how the editorial harmed her reputation, while saying that "things changed" and many people thought less of her. The June 14, 2017, editorial was written after a shooting that day at a congressional baseball practice in Virginia where Republican U.S. congressman Steve Scalise was wounded.
He told jurors he had been under deadline pressure when he added the phrase "the link to political incitement was clear" to the editorial. During cross-examination, Palin agreed that the symbols on the map looked like cross hairs, but also resembled surveyor markings.But while accusing media of abusing their "power of the pen," she identified none who in Axelrod's words wanted to "go out and hunt" her because of the map.
Under questioning from her own lawyer Kenneth Turkel, Palin also said the editorial caused her suffering.
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