Lawyers representing both sides in Sarah Palin’s defamation suit against The New York Times made their closing arguments on Friday, as a jury in the federal court in Lower Manhattan prepared to deliberate whether the newspaper defamed her.
Kenneth Turkel, one of the lawyers for the former Alaska governor, told jurors that the case was ultimately about “power” and what he characterized as the irresponsible and unaccountable manner in which The Times wielded it when it published an editorial in 2017 that incorrectly linked Ms. Palin’s political rhetoric to a mass shooting in Arizona. The mistake, which The Times corrected the morning after the editorial was published online, was “indicative of an arrogance and a sense of power that’s uncontrolled,” Mr. Turkel said.
“An entity as large as The New York Times Company controls every aspect of this dialogue,” he added. “At the click of a button, someone’s accused of inciting murder.”
David Axelrod, who is representing The Times, argued that the case was ultimately about an “honest mistake.” He said that Ms. Palin’s arguments required the jurors to believe that there was a nonexistent “conspiracy” afoot led by the newspaper’s former opinion editor, James Bennet, to intentionally smear her.
Mr. Axelrod dismissed the notion of “Mr. Bennet’s plot” as defying common sense given the contrition Mr. Bennet displayed in emails shown to the jury. “If the intent was to defame, if the intent was to harm political rivals, would you say ‘We’re sorry we made a mistake?’” Mr. Axelrod said.
Ms. Palin finished her testimony on Thursday, during which she echoed Mr. Turkel’s arguments, saying that The Times was “the Goliath” that had spread “lies” about her. Though she was once the Republican Party’s brightest star, her lawyers have claimed that her loss of influence and popularity in recent years was part of the reason she was so harmed by the erroneous claim in the editorial. The piece included an incorrect reference to a 2010 map from Ms. Palin’s political action committee that included illustrations of cross hairs over 20 House districts held by Democrats.
When one of her lawyers asked her to explain what kind of political work she was doing, she answered that it had slowed down considerably. “There aren’t really as many requests for that kind of assistance,” she said.
Her more than three hours of testimony offered glimpses of the former Tea Party star who relished her public battles with former President Barack Obama, prominent journalists like Katie Couric and the leaders of her own Republican Party — the “Sarah Barracuda,” as she was memorably nicknamed by her high school basketball teammates and branded by the McCain campaign.
When Mr. Axelrod had his opportunity to question Ms. Palin on Thursday, he first tried to establish that she was hardly the “David” figure she claimed to be in her analogy, and then ran through a list of network television appearances she had made around the time the editorial was published, including one short stint on the reality show “The Masked Singer.”
At this, Ms. Palin interjected. “Objection!” she said, drawing laughter from the courtroom. Asked by Mr. Axelrod why she had done that — it is her lawyer’s job to register an objection — Ms. Palin responded, “I just thought it was funny.”
The Times rested its case on Thursday by calling a witness who lawyers hoped would establish one of the key arguments in its defense. Hanna Ingber, a Times editor who was involved in pushing the correction to social media, testified that she had suggested posting it on Twitter because “we wanted as many readers as possible to know.” The newspaper’s lawyers have said, and other witnesses have testified, that the editors and writers who worked on the piece were deeply concerned about the error after it came to their attention and tried to correct it in as transparent a fashion as possible.
Ms. Palin and her lawyers have argued the opposite. The Times, they said, was halfhearted in its correction, which failed to mention Ms. Palin or her political action committee.
“When a bell is rung, you can’t unring the bell,” Ms. Palin said from the stand on Thursday.
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