Sarah Palin is the former Alaska governor. She also was one of the candidates for the 2008 vice president positions. And she tested positive for COVID-19. This means that her defamation trial against the New York Times will have to wait, as it was set to begin on Monday.
Palin initially did a rapid at-home test on Sunday night, and she tested positive. She is unvaccinated. The judge asked her to get re-tested on Monday, and she was positive again. The judge, Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York, has delayed the trial until the 3rd of February.
Palin stated that she had COVID last March, and she is still against the vaccines. At a rally last December, she even stated that she would rather die before getting the COVID-19 vaccine: “It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot. I will not do that. I won’t do it, and they better not touch my kids either.” After testing positive, she said that she feels absolutely normal.
Palin confirms she tested positive for Covid. pic.twitter.com/VixODVPa99
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) January 25, 2022
About the defamation trial
Palin sued the New York Times back in 2017 that falsely linked gun violence to political rhetoric from PAC – a pro-Palin political action committee. Basically, the Democrats who voted for the Affordable Care Act were connected to the 2011 shooting of Congress Gabby Giffords.
Three days after the article, they issued a correction, saying that there was no such link established, and that they had actually misunderstood the map.
At first, the case was dismissed in 2017, but Palin’s lawyers had it appealed. The case got back to trial in 2019: “We find that the district court erred in relying on facts outside the pleadings to dismiss the complaint. We further conclude that Palin’s Proposed Amended Complaint plausibly states a claim for defamation and may proceed to full discovery.”
