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Sarah Palin to subpoena nearly two dozen New York Times staffers in lawsuit
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) plans to subpoena 23 New York Times staffers as part of her defamation lawsuit against the newspaper. (2016 file photo/Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images)

Sarah Palin to subpoena nearly two dozen New York Times staffers in lawsuit

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) plans to subpoena nearly two dozen New York Times reporters, editors, and other staffers as part of her defamation lawsuit against the newspaper.

In a motion arguing for the case’s dismissal, lawyers for the Times complained that Palin’s legal team had served notice that she plans to subpoena “23 non-party current and former Times reporters, editors, and other employees — most of whom had nothing to do with the editorial issue,” the New York Post reported.

The one-time GOP vice presidential candidate also plans to ask the Times to produce “every internal communication it has had about her since 2011” in an effort to obtain all “documents that might reveal, among other things, their ‘negative feelings’ toward her,” the Times’ lawyers told a judge during a Wednesday hearing.

Palin is suing the Gray Lady over a June 14 editorial that came just hours after House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot and wounded during an attack at a Republican congressional baseball practice. The column, attributed to the Times’ editorial board and titled, “America’s Lethal Politics,” linked Palin’s rhetoric to the January 2011 shooting of then-Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) in Tucson, Arizona.

The next day, the Times issued a correction, admitting that “no such link was established.”

The editorial also erroneously claimed that an infamous ad from Palin’s political action committee placed “Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.” The Times also issued a correction for that statement, admitting the crosshairs targeted “electoral districts, not individual Democratic lawmakers.”

“The Times used its false assertion about Mrs. Palin as an artifice to exploit the [Scalise] shooting,” Palin’s legal team stated in the lawsuit against the newspaper.

“The Times published and promoted its editorial board’s column despite knowing … the false assertion that Mrs. Palin incited [Tucson shooter Jared] Loughner to murder six people,” the statement continued. “In doing so, the Times violated the law and its own policies.”

The Times’ legal team claims Palin has no case because she cannot prove malice, which is the legal standard for claiming defamation.

“We are confident that the First Amendment protects publishers in these circumstances, and we intend to defend the action vigorously,” a Times representative told Fox News.

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