The unvaccinated former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin tested positive for Covid, a federal judge told a courtroom before he postponed the scheduled start Monday of a defamation trial involving the one-time-Alaska governor and the New York Times was set to begin.
Palin’s civil suit against Times now will be heard by a jury in Manhattan federal court on Feb. 3 as a result of her Covid-19 status.
She disclosed in March that she had been diagnosed then with the coronavirus.
Last month, Palin said that she will get a Covid-19 vaccine “over my dead body.”
Judge Jed Rakoff announced in court Monday that he learned Sunday evening that the 57-year-old Palin was again positive for the virus.
“She is of course unvaccinated,” Rakoff said.
After a second test confirmed Palin was positive for Covid, Rakoff postponed the trial start date to February.
The mother of five sued the Times and its former editorial page editor for allegedly damaging her reputation with a 2017 editorial that suggested an image produced by Palin’s political action committee incited the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona.
Palin was not well known to the American public when GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain picked her to be his running mate in 2008.
The McCain-Palin ticket lost to President Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, who is now presdident.
