Sarah Palin asks court to prevent jurors from seeing ‘Masked Singer’ footage in NYT defamation suit

Get the latest BPR news delivered free to your inbox daily. SIGN UP HERE


Former Alaska governor and political commentator Sarah Palin has asked that jurors in her defamation case against The New York Times be barred from viewing footage of her appearance on the Fox reality show “The Masked Singer.”

Palin filed suit against the leftist newspaper in 2017 for an editorial they published in which Palin was linked via a debunked conspiracy theory to the attempted assassination of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a staunch gun control advocate, in Tucson, AZ in 2011.

In a court filing attached to the original Manhattan federal suit Monday, the former GOP vice presidential candidate reportedly requested that several exhibits be disallowed from the jury’s consideration for fear they could cause “unfair prejudice and confusion.”

Among the dozens of exhibits Palin has listed are “Masked Singer Video – Dancing and Rapping” and “Masked Singer Video – Reveal,” all of which she requests to be given the opportunity to approve or reject their admissibility. Also included in that list are several press articles, namely the NYT editorial and its unfounded assertions.

Palin’s lawyers wrote in the recent filing that potential exhibits were all disclosed pretrial, but they were unsure why the Times would want to use footage of her performance on “The Masked Singer.” The attorneys argued the proposed exhibits are “objectionable on various grounds, including without limitation: relevancy; unfair prejudice and confusion; improper character evidence; and hearsay.”

The outlet has until Jan. 17 to respond to the motion, and the judge in the case will rule on the motion subsequent to the response.

Palin was unveiled as a contestant on the Fox game show on the Mar. 11 episode in 2020 in what seems to be universally described as a “stunning reveal.”

The 2017 NYT editorial in question was titled “America’s Lethal Politics” which at the time was in reference to a rise in attacks on political figures, including the attack on the Congressional Baseball Game practice in Virginia that same year perpetuated by a radical left-wing Bernie Sanders supporter, and which wounded and almost claimed the life of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA).

Palin claimed The Times defamed her when it “falsely stated as a matter of fact to millions of people that Mrs. Palin incited Jared Loughner’s January 8, 2011, shooting rampage at a political event in Tucson, Arizona, during which he shot nineteen people, severely wounding United States Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords …”

The suit states that The Times’ piece accused Palin’s political action committee of distributing a map that placed “Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.”

In a non-apology and quasi-correction, The Times wrote that the article “incorrectly described a map distributed by a political action committee before that shooting. It depicted electoral districts, not individual Democratic lawmakers, beneath stylized cross hairs.”

The outlet tried to get the case dismissed and was temporality successful in 2017.

As BPR reported in 2019,

On Tuesday, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Palin can move forward with her defamation lawsuit that linked her to a 2011 mass shooting. This coming on the heels of a pair of shootings last weekend that claimed the lives of 31 people.

The former Alaska governor sued the newspaper in 2017 over an editorial that tied an ad by Palin’s super PAC to the shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., but the case was thrown out later that year by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York — imagine that.

 

The case is scheduled to go to trial in the upcoming weeks unless a deal is reached between the parties.

An attorney for Palin did not respond to a request for comment from the New York Post, nor did a spokesperson for The Times.

DONATE TO BIZPAC REVIEW

Please help us! If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to BPR to help us fight them. Now is the time. Truth has never been more critical!

Success! Thank you for donating. Please share BPR content to help combat the lies.
Frank Webster

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

PLEASE JOIN OUR NEW COMMENT SYSTEM! We love hearing from our readers and invite you to join us for feedback and great conversation. If you've commented with us before, we'll need you to re-input your email address for this. The public will not see it and we do not share it.

Latest Articles