Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s libel suit against the New York Times was set to be argued before a jury on Monday.
The trial could be pushed back to February 3 because Palin tested positive for Covid on Monday morning, federal judge Jed Rakoff told the court. Rakoff said the court was waiting for results of a second Covid test for Palin, who has already contracted the illness.
Palin alleges that the paper and former editorial page editor James Bennet defamed her in an op-ed on June 14, 2017, by linking her political action committee to the 2011 shooting of former Arizona Democratic representative Gabrielle Giffords. The editorial was published after the shooting of Representative Steve Scalise (R., La.) by a left-wing extremist.
Jury selection begins Monday morning after four and a half years of litigation and could be followed by opening statements as soon as Monday afternoon. The trial will likely last five days, according to Reuters.
The editorial initially stated that “the link to political incitement was clear” between Giffords’s shooting in 2011 and a map circulated by Palin’s PAC that showed 20 Democratic districts, including Giffords’s, placed under “stylized crosshairs.” The Times revised the editorial shortly after publication to disavow a “link” between the map and the Giffords shooting.
Bennet has stated he made an error in adding language claiming a link between the two, but Palin has pressed forward with a libel suit. Palin’s legal team has not commented on the case. Jordan Cohen, a Times spokesperson, said the paper committed an error that should not be punished as defamatory.
“In this trial we are seeking to reaffirm a foundational principle of American law: public figures should not be permitted to use libel suits to punish unintentional errors by news organizations,” Cohen said. “We published an editorial about an important topic that contained an inaccuracy. We set the record straight with a correction.”
Giffords was shot in the head during a meet-and-greet at a supermarket in her district on the morning of January 8, 2011. The gunman, Jared Loughner, opened fire minutes into the event, killing six people and wounding 13 others, including Giffords. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.