Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told a jury Thursday she felt like she was at the mercy of a “Goliath” when she first learned a 2017 New York Times editorial suggested her campaign rhetoric helped incite a mass shooting.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin leaves Federal court on Feb. 4, 2022, in New York. Palin took the witness stand this week in her defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.
“It was devastating to read a false accusation that I had anything to do with murder,” Palin said. “I felt powerless - that I was up against Goliath. The people were David. I was David.” Palin sued the Times for unspecified damages in 2017, about a decade after she burst onto the national stage as the Republican vice-presidential nominee. She alleged the newspaper had damaged her career as a political commentator and consultant with the editorial about gun control published after U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, was wounded when, the Times wrote that before the 2011 mass shooting in Arizona that severely wounded former U.S. Rep.
The jury will have to decide whether former editorial page editor James Bennet acted with “actual malice,” meaning he knew what he wrote was false, or with “reckless disregard” for the truth when he inserted the disputed wording into the piece.
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