Sarah Palin has filed a lawsuit against the New York Times on Tuesday over an editorial that linked her directly to a fatal mass shooting.
Palin is a former governor of Alaska and was Republican Sen. John McCain’s pick for vice-president during his failed 2008 presidential bid.
The New York Times originally published the piece, authored by its editorial board, on June 14, following the shooting at a congressional baseball game that wounded Republican Rep. Steve Scalise. The original version of the editorial stated that “the link to political incitement was clear” when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot in 2011, killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, and wounding Rep. Gabby Giffords.
In the following sentence, the editorial falsely asserted that Palin circulated a map prior to the shooting that put “Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.” The Times further stated that “there’s no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack.”
