This piece at Slate discusses the failed lawsuit by Sarah Palin against the New York Times. The good news is that both the judge and the jury agreed that Palin did not prove that the Times acted with malice when they made a mistake, quickly corrected, back in 2012.
But this is not the end of it, unfortunately:
Sitting in the observer section at the trial—along with Sarah Palin’s boyfriend, James Bennet’s wife, a bunch of journalists, and a few curious members of the public—there was one especially intriguing figure. Charles Harder was the lead attorney when Hulk Hogan sued Gawker out of existence. And Harder watched every minute of the testimony in this trial, taking copious notes on a legal pad. He wasn’t working with Palin’s legal team (though he’d worked with them before, in that Gawker case). He was just watching.
During breaks in the proceedings, I peppered Harder with questions. How much did he think this trial was costing Palin? Answer: More than $1 million. How much would it cost to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court? Answer: $5 million, give or take. Was it possible Palin’s attorneys were working on a contingency basis, or maybe doing this just for the publicity? Answer: Basically, no.
Hulk Hogan didn’t pay his own legal costs (meaning, in part, Harder’s invoices) when he took Gawker to court. Silicon Valley grotesquerie Peter Thiel famously footed Hogan’s bill—secretly at first, until he was outed as Hogan’s backer. When it comes to this trial, I just can’t bring myself to believe that Palin paid for it out of pocket. If indeed she didn’t, and someone else was funding this, I wondered where that money was coming from. I asked Harder if he knew. He said he didn’t.
Then I asked Harder one last thing: Why exactly was he here? He was taking all those notes—was it for an article he’s writing, or a book? No, he said, “I’m just here to observe and learn.”
That was the most chilling thing I heard in that courtroom. What exactly did he learn from Sarah Palin’s (so far) failed effort to sink the Times? How exactly is he planning to apply those lessons? My fear is that, before long, we’ll all find out.
He even threatened this poor blog once for posting something that was shown on MSNBC that he claimed wasn’t true. He’s done it to others as well, on behalf of Donald Trump. He is formidable.
What I can’t figure out is why the right wing media would be in favor of this sort of thing. Do they think they will be immune?