(Bloomberg) — Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin tested positive for Covid-19, leading to the postponement of the trial in her closely watched defamation suit against the New York Times just as it was about to get underway.
Opening statements in the case were scheduled to begin on Monday before U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who announced that morning that Palin had tested positive the night before. That result was confirmed by a second test on Monday, resulting in the postponement of the trial until Feb. 3.
The judge said that if Palin, who is unvaccinated, has no symptoms on the new trial date, the case will go ahead then. If her situation changes, an epidemiologist will make a determination if it’s safe to proceed.
Palin, 57, has become a vocal opponent of Covid vaccines and laws requiring vaccination. “It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot,” she said at a conservative rally in December. “I will not do that. I won’t do it, and they better not touch my kids either.”
Cross-Hairs on Map
The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee sued the Times over a 2017 opinion piece that incorrectly linked a map put out by her political action committee, SarahPAC, to a 2011 shooting in which six people were killed and 13 wounded, including then-U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat.
Though the Times corrected the piece within a day of publication, Palin claims she deserves damages because the error was made knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth. The newspaper claims Palin is unable to meet that fault standard, which applies to public figures.
The SarahPAC map showed cross-hairs targeting Giffords’s congressional district and 19 others represented by Democrats. Investigators later determined that the killer, who was mentally ill, had anger toward Giffords that predated the SarahPAC illustration.
The case is Palin v. New York Times Co., 17-CV-04853, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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