Sarah Palin says her suit against The Times made her a ‘David’ vs. a ‘Goliath’

She was accused of making things up herself, sometimes with major ramifications for American politics. In 2009, she wrote a post on Facebook that falsely claimed the Affordable Care Act championed by Mr. Obama would subject Americans to “death panels” that would decide who was eligible for lifesaving medical treatment. PolitiFact rated it the “Lie of the Year,” and Mr. Obama felt compelled to refute the claim in an address to a joint session of Congress because it had gained such traction in conservative media.

That was back when Ms. Palin was the Republican Party’s biggest star and widely thought of as a future presidential contender, though she never ran.

The subject of Ms. Palin’s devalued political stock became a relevant point in the trial because her lawyers claimed that her loss of influence and popularity was part of the reason she was so harmed by the erroneous claim in the editorial.

When one of her lawyers asked her to explain what kind of political work she was doing, she answered that it had slowed down considerably. “There aren’t really as many requests for that kind of assistance,” she said.

Ms. Palin explained on Wednesday, when she began her testimony, that she was now spending most of her time in her hometown, Wasilla, Alaska, where she was “holding down the fort” as a single mother raising a child with special needs. She and her husband, Todd, divorced in 2020.

The Times rested its case on Thursday by calling a witness it intended to establish one of the key arguments in its defense. Hanna Ingber, a Times editor who was involved in pushing the correction to social media, testified that she had suggested posting it on Twitter because “we wanted as many readers as possible to know.” The newspaper’s lawyers have said, and other witnesses have testified, that the editors and writers who worked on the piece were deeply concerned about the error after it came to their attention and tried to correct it in as transparent a fashion as possible.

Ms. Palin and her lawyers have argued the opposite. The Times, they said, was halfhearted in its correction, which failed to mention Ms. Palin or her political action committee.

“When a bell is rung, you can’t unring the bell,” Ms. Palin said from the stand on Thursday.