What was supposed to be the first day of the trial in ex-GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s defamation case against the New York Times on Monday has been pushed back to next week after she tested positive for COVID-19, the judge in the case announced on Monday.
Manhattan federal court Judge Jed Rakoff, who is overseeing the fight in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, told the courtroom that Palin had tested positive on Sunday night.
“She is, of course, unvaccinated,” he remarked.
Rakoff rescheduled the trial to February 3.
During a conference hosted by right-wing group Turning Point in December, Palin declared that she would never get the COVID-19 vaccine or comply with vaccine mandates.
“It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot,” she said. “I won’t do it.”
Palin also urged the audience to “rise up” and say “nooooo, enough is enough” to the mandates.
The former Alaska governor is suing the Times over a 2017 editorial that connected the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords (AZ) to an electoral district map distributed by Palin’s super PAC. The editorial, written in wake of the Republican congressional baseball practice shooting that injured Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), argued that Giffords’ shooting and the “link to political incitement” was “clear.”
The Times issued a correction the day after the column was published, stating that “no such link was established.”
Palin filed her lawsuit later that June.
