Palin v NYT was just the start... chilling Slate article.
We all know the story, Palin roundly defeated in Court.
There's MORE to the story.
Readers Digest version: The attorney behind the destruction of Gawker attended the trial each day taking copious notes. Slate then suggests that the Palin team of attorneys may be paid by Peter Thiel, possibly to get this in front of a Supreme Court where TWO Justices have already said "NYT v Sullivan needs to be re-examined"
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/02/sarah-palin-loses-new-york-times-lawsuit-verdict.html
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.
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