Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has tested positive for Covid, and is unvaccinated, a federal judge told a courtroom Monday just as a civil defamation trial involving the one-time-Alaska governor and the New York Times was set to begin.
Palin, who disclosed in March that she had been diagnosed then with the coronavirus, said last month that she will get a Covid-19 vaccine “over my dead body.”
Manhattan federal court 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, according to the Reuters news service.
Rakoff was awaiting the results of a second test on Palin, which will determine whether the trial can go forward or whether it will be delayed.
Palin had 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.