NEW YORK (AP) — The judge who presided over Sarah Palin's libel case against The New York Times says she failed to introduce “even a speck” of evidence necessary to prove actual malice.
Federal Judge Jed Rakoff made the assertion in a written decision Tuesday as he rejected post-trial claims from Palin's lawyers.
Her attorneys had asked the judge to grant a new trial or disqualify himself as biased against Palin.
But Rakoff wrote that regardless of her post-trial motions, Palin wasn't able to deliver evidence that even remotely supported her defamation claim.
Palin's lawyers declined to comment Tuesday.
In February, a jury ruled against Palin's claim that The Times maliciously damaged her reputation with an editorial linking her campaign rhetoric to the mass shooting that injured former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
The Times acknowledged that the 2017 editorial wrongly suggested Palin's political action committee helped inspire a 2011 Arizona shooting that killed six.
The paper said the mistake wasn't intentional.
