Sarah Palin’s amazingly frivolous libel suit

It would be difficult to construct a more absurd piece of litigation than this one.

In short, the NYT published an editorial that suggested a link between a map distributed by Palin’s PAC, that showed crosshairs over the districts of various Democratic politicians, including Gabby Giffords, and the shooting of Giffords in 2011. This was, as the paper’s editors realized immediately, a mistake, as there was no evidence that the shooter ever saw the map. The mistake was corrected within 14 HOURS, with the paper issuing a prominent correction to the editorial the next day.

Palin is claiming that the paper libeled her, which is preposterous. The legal standard here is that she would have to show the editorial’s suggestion regarding the map wasn’t a mistake, but a product of actual malice, meaning the authors knew the claim was false, or published it with reckless disregard for the truth, which is supposed to be a high enough bar that the facts in this case clearly don’t meet it. And even if for the purposes of argument the facts DID meet the legal standard for libel, what damages could Palin possibly demonstrate, given that the paper corrected the record within hours, and that Palin was a washed up punchline of a political figure by that point anyway?

The first time this case went to trial, the judge properly directed the jury to find no liability, since the facts simply don’t support any such finding. But an appeals court reversed this, so now the case is back in court, with James Bennet, who inserted the line about the map into the piece under deadline pressure, getting teary-eyed on the stand Friday about the terrible mistake he made.

Given the MAGA mob mentality that is sweeping over half this country at the moment, who knows what a jury might find if its allowed to rule on these facts, but the case is as absurd as Palin herself, who in retrospect was clearly Joan the Baptist to Donald Trump’s eventual appearance as Lord and Personal Savior of America’s turn to reactionary authoritarianism.