Media

Palin team to subpoena 23 New York Times reporters in defamation suit

by Joe Concha - 07/27/17 2:05 PM ET

Sarah Palin’s legal team plans to subpoena 23 current and former staff members of The New York Times, including writers and editors, for a defamation lawsuit, according to court papers filed in a federal district court in Manhattan on Wednesday.

The legal team will demand the newspaper turn over “every internal communication it has had about the former vice presidential candidate since 2011.”

Palin filed the suit against the Times in June, alleging defamation. The case concerns an opinion piece written by the paper’s editorial board that directly linked the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) to a political ad publicized by Palin. The ad put Democratic districts up for reelection in a logo symbolizing crosshairs.

{mosads}The Giffords shooting, which happened in Tucson, Ariz., also left six others dead.

The court filing shows Palin claiming the newspaper wrongly accused her of “inciting a mass shooting at a political event in January 2011.”

The former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee, 53, also said in court papers that the paper intentionally printed information that it “knew to be false.”

“In 2011, Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Rep. Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl,” the Times editorial board wrote in the piece published on June 14. “At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right.”

“Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs,” it continued.

The editorial came one day after House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot along with three others at a congressional baseball practice in Virginia.

After blowback that included PolitiFact giving the paper a “false” rating for linking Palin to the Giffords shooting, the Times issued a correction but did not delete the editorial.

“An editorial on Thursday about the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords,” the correction read. “In fact, no such link was established.”

“The editorial also incorrectly described a map distributed by a political action committee before that shooting. It depicted electoral districts, not individual Democratic lawmakers, beneath stylized cross hairs,” it added.

Palin’s lawyers are seeking “documents that might reveal, among other things, their negative feelings’ toward her,” according to the papers filed.

Her legal team is the same as the one that represented Hulk Hogan, or Terry Bollea, against Gawker Media in a defamation suit after the publication posted a sex tape of the wrestler.

Hogan, 63, won the suit, and Gawker has since gone out of business after declaring bankruptcy.

The Times says it made an “honest mistake” with the Palin editorial and is asking the court to throw out the lawsuit.

Tags Gabrielle Giffords Hulk Hogan Public image of Sarah Palin Sarah Palin Sarah Palin Steve Scalise