Sarah Palin Casts Herself As 'David' Against 'Goliath' New York Times At Trial

Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and onetime Republican Party vice presidential nominee, took the stand Thursday in her defamation case against The New York Times a battle she described in biblical terms.

Palin alleges that the newspaper’s editors intentionally smeared her with an editorial published the same day a gunman targeted Republican lawmakers at a congressional baseball practice the morning of June 14, 2017.

She testified that reading the editorial was “devastating” and made her feel “powerless.”

“I knew if I wanted to raise my head and try to get the word out ... I knew I was up against Goliath and, collectively, the people were David. I was David,” Palin said in a New York federal court.

The piece, attributed to the Times’ editorial board, stated that American political rhetoric had become too vicious and referenced a graphic from Palin’s political action committee in its argument.

On cross-examination, however, Palin struggled to produce evidence that she had been harmed by the editorial. She stated that she “lost income” in the wake of its publication but could not point to any specific opportunities that were taken away. An attorney for the Times, David Axelrod, established that Palin continued to appear on TV after the editorial, including spots on Fox News and a stint on ABC’s “The Masked Singer” at the mention of which Palin jokingly inserted an objection.

In addition to her television platforms, Palin maintains Facebook and Twitter pages with over 1 million followers, Axelrod pointed out, painting a picture that clashed with Palin’s “David” metaphor.

Palin, in turn, resisted the idea that she was still a powerful figure, saying other people run her social media and downplaying her TV appearances. She quipped that “The Masked Singer” was “the most fun 90 seconds of my life,” although she admitted that it paid well.

The Times editorial at the heart of the case attempted to argue that the problem of overheated rhetoric existed on both sides of the aisle , comparing the congressional baseball incident that critically wounded Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) to the 2011 mass shooting that killed six and critically wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.).

Former New York Times opinion editor James Bennet was primarily responsible for the piece, having substantially revised a draft submitted late in the day. Bennet pointed to a map that had been published by Palin’s political action committee, SarahPAC, months prior to the Giffords shooting depicting the United States with crosshairs over certain districts held by Democrats .

There was never any evidence to suggest that the Giffords shooter, Jared Loughner, had seen the map or was influenced by Palin’s rhetoric.

But the Times’ phrasing made it seem like the link between the shooter and Palin were already established and obvious. It also incorrectly described the map, suggesting the crosshairs were placed over images of the Democratic politicians themselves, rather than faceless districts.

When she read the editorial, Palin said she felt “mortified.” The map had already been brought up in the aftermath of the Giffords shooting six years earlier, and now the purported link was out there again.

“It was another, ‘Oh no, not again, what are we going to do to correct those errors, those untruths, in the editorial when it links me to inciting the murders of innocent people?’” she said Thursday.

Palin also made a sweeping allegation in court that prompted a disruption, incorrectly claiming The New York Times would write about SarahPAC inciting violence outside the scope of the one editorial at the center of the trial. Attorneys and Judge Jed S. Rakoff were forced to hold a lengthy sidebar before proceeding.

“My view was The New York Times took a lot of liberties and wasn’t always truthful,” Palin said.

In Bennet’s own testimony this week, the former opinion editor said he never meant for readers to come away from the editorial thinking that Palin had incited Loughner’s attack, despite using the verb “incite” in the piece.

“I didn’t think then and I don’t think now that the map caused Jared Loughner to act,” Bennet said Wednesday. Axelrod posed several similarly worded questions allowing Bennet to respond with a decisive “no” when asked whether he ever thought readers would conclude that Palin sparked Loughner’s violence.

Bennet testified that he felt “terrible” about the ordeal and tried to correct the record in a timely manner.

“I was upset and confused, I have to say. I just was so blindsided by this,” he said on the stand.

Yet Bennet did not check the facts himself even after they were drawn into question. He said this was because he was “functioning as the editor, not the reporter.” Instead, he directed his subordinates to address the matter as swiftly as possible, writing in one email that he did not actually know the truth. In another, he apologized for moving “too fast” on the piece.

“We are human beings. We do make mistakes,” Bennet testified. “We don’t promise to be perfect. We promise to try our damndest to be perfect, and when we get something wrong, we try to fix it.”

Another New York Times editorial writer, Ross Douthat, had emailed Bennet the night of June 14, 2017, to let him know he agreed with the criticism of the piece that was accumulating on Twitter at the time. Douthat testified on Wednesday that he believed “the most natural reading” of the editorial would lead to his takeaway the incorrect idea that Palin directly sparked Loughner’s violence.

The Times eventually corrected the editorial twice. The original version was live on the paper’s website for around 12 hours, and cemented in the print edition until a correction ran the following day.

Defamation suits against the U.S. press are notoriously difficult to win, and Palin’s case was initially tossed out before being reinstated on appeal. Now that it has traveled its unlikely path to trial by jury, the case stands to potentially challenge the landmark precedent that set the bar for defamation so high.

“If Palin were to lose, and then appealed this, and it went all the way up to the Supreme Court, then it might be an opportunity for the court to reconsider the standard of New York Times v. Sullivan, which, of course, is a bedrock of First Amendment law,” Samantha Barbas, a law professor at the University at Buffalo who specializes in First Amendment law, told HuffPost.

The 1964 decision established the “actual malice” legal standard; in order for public figures like Palin to prove defamation, they must show that the defendant either knew something published was false or did not care to find out.

“It would have a huge impact on free speech in America, if that standard would change,” Barbas said.

Attorneys for the Times have portrayed the whole thing as an honest mistake.

“Plenty of things that are quite regrettable, and even negligent journalism, do not show the level of fault that Palin has to prove to win,” RonNell Andersen Jones, a University of Utah law professor and a fellow with Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, told HuffPost. “We have to get to a place where there is either knowing falsity a deliberate lie or reckless disregard for the truth.”

Just showing that a journalist “could have or should have done better” is not enough, Jones said. Rather, Palin’s attorneys need to show “that he in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of the publication.”

“So you see a lot of effort to try to draw attention to things that might lean towards that, trying to prove the ignoring of clear signals that it’s wrong, or being motivated by a storyline,” Jones said.

“But it’s hard,” she added. “A high degree of awareness of probable falsity is a hard thing to prove, and that’s why there’s so much detailed inquiry about the path it took to publication, and what Bennet in particular thought and knew and did.”

In effect, the trial has given the public the chance to see that reporting can sometimes be messy.