Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is planning to subpoena (summon to court) nearly two dozen current and former New York Times reporters, editors, and other employees as part of her defamation lawsuit against the newspaper.
The detail was revealed after lawyers for The New York Times complained that Palin’s legal team was planning to subpoena 23 of the newspaper’s staff “most of whom had nothing to do with the editorial at issue,” the New York Post reports.
In a Manhattan federal court, in a motion to have the case dismissed The Times said the subpoenas were issued so Palin could obtain “documents that might reveal, among other things, their ‘negative feelings’ toward her.”
The legal team representing Palin also reportedly planned to ask the newspaper to produce “every internal communication it has had about her since 2011,” the Times told the judge on Wednesday, July 26.
Palin, a Republican and former vice presidential candidate, is suing The Times after it published an editorial on June 14 that incorrectly tied her political rhetoric to the January 2011 shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords that killed 6 people and wounded 13 others.
- People walk past the New York Times building on July 27, 2017 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The Times did end up posting a correction the following day that admitted, “No such link was established.”
The piece was published just hours after House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), was shot and wounded at a Republican congressional baseball practice.
Palin’s lawyers argued that the newspaper fully knew the statements were false but “fabricated the link anyway” in order to drive web traffic.”
At contention was the quote from the editorial that said Palin’s political committee put “Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.” The Times later corrected that statement, admitting that the crosshairs on the map targeted “electoral districts, not individual Democratic lawmakers,” Fox News reports.
The newspaper claims that Palin cannot sue because she can not prove malice occurred, which is the predominant legal factor concerning a defamation case.