Former vice presidential candidate and Alaskan governor Sarah Palin lost her defamation retrial against the New York Times.
A New York jury rejected Palin’s claim that the newspaper defamed her in a 2017 opinion piece, in which the publication insinuated that the former Republican politician was responsible for inciting political violence in the country, specifically linking Palin to the shooting of former Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011.
It was Palin’s second defeat in her attempt to hold the publication accountable for what she claimed was defamation. She lost the first trial in 2022 after a jury found the Times wasn’t liable for defaming the former Alaskan governor.
The original case stemmed from a Times editorial that was published shortly after the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise and the attempted assassination of congressional Republicans and staffers at a baseball field in Washington, D.C. The Times article linked that incident to the attack on Giffords six years earlier by claiming that 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.” Palin’s lawsuit rebutted this assertion and said the article’s description was incorrect.
The Times eventually corrected the article 14 hours after it was published, adding a sentence after the accusation about crosshairs: “But in that case, no connection to the shooting was ever established.”
Palin’s lawsuit claimed that “the Times conduct was committed knowingly, intentionally, willfully, wantonly and maliciously, with the intent to harm Mrs. Palin, or in blatant disregard of the substantial likelihood of causing her harm, thereby entitling Mrs. Palin to an award of punitive damages.”
The New York Times issued a statement after the trial thanking the jury for their work.
“We want to thank the jurors for their careful deliberations. The decision reaffirms an important tenet of American law: publishers are not liable for honest mistakes,” said a spokesperson from the Times.
We didn’t prevail in federal court against the New York Times. But please keep fighting for integrity in media. I’ll keep asking the press to quit making things up
keep the faith https://t.co/6gB1ZVvzFj pic.twitter.com/IDJeOgFqZN
— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) April 22, 2025
Palin posted a video on social media after the jury’s verdict, showing her leaving the court and entering an SUV. Above the video, the text said that she gets to “go home” and return to “the best 5 kids a mom could ever hope for & a quiver full of perfect grandbabies.” The same post also included a message about the trial’s outcome.
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“We didn’t prevail in federal court against the New York Times,” Palin posted. “But please keep fighting for integrity in media. I’ll keep asking the press to quit making things up.”
“Keep the faith,” Palin said in conclusion.