Judge refuses to grant Sarah Palin a new trial in her defamation lawsuit against The New York Times

NEW YORK – Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s bid for a new defamation trial against The New York Times was rejected Monday by a federal judge in New York, who also denied Palin’s request for the judge to recuse himself.

Judge Jed S. Rakoff said in a written opinion that he was “scrupulous” in offering Palin a fair trial last April, when a jury concluded that the Times did not defame the former Alaska governor in a 2017 editorial.

It was the second jury to reach that conclusion after the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ordered a new trial after Rakoff said in February 2022, while the jury in the first trial was deliberating, that he planned to dismiss the lawsuit because Palin had failed to prove the newspaper had acted out of malice.

Regarding the request to recuse himself, the judge said the trial transcript shows that he often ruled in Palin’s favor during the trials.

Danielle Rhoades Ha, spokesperson for the newspaper, said in an email that the Times was pleased with the decision.

“The jury returned the correct verdict in rejecting Palin’s defamation claim, and today’s decision reaffirms the jury’s decision,” she said.

Attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Palin sued the Times in 2017 for unspecified damages, a decade after she was chosen by then-U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona as the Republican vice presidential nominee. McCain died in 2018.

The lawsuit said Palin was defamed by an editorial on gun control published after U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana, was injured in 2017 when a man with a history of anti-GOP activities opened fire at a congressional baseball team practice game in Washington.

In its editorial, the Times said that before the 2011 mass shooting in Arizona, which seriously injured former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed six others, Palin’s political action committee contributed to an atmosphere of violence by distributing a map of constituencies that depicted Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.

The Times corrected the article less than 14 hours after it was published, saying it had “wrongly stated there was a link between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting” and that it had “inaccurately described” the map.

During this year’s trial, former Times editorial page editor James Bennet tearfully apologized to Palin. He said he was haunted by the error and worked urgently to correct it after readers complained to the newspaper.

Palin, who earned a degree in journalism in college, testified that death threats against her increased and her mood dropped after the editorial was published.