Out the gate, Palin's attorney Shane Vogt asks Bennet if it would surprise him for readers to interpret the word "incitement" to mean its dictionary definition.
"It wouldn't surprise me," he replies.
Vogt presses Bennet of any evidence of rhetoric on the left that could be tied to the 2017 congressional baseball shooting by James Hodgkinson.
After a back and forth, Bennet ultimately agrees they didn't find any.
Q: Is gun control also an issue that's important to you personally?
A: Yes.
He notes that he moderated an event at the Atlantic that dealt with gun control and also policing.
Vogt quotes Bennet as having said:
"Nobody is 100% right. So a writer must listen carefully, must question everybody’s assumptions, including his own."
Q: Is that a way you aspire to practice journalism?
A: That’s certainly the way I aspire to practice journalism.
Judge Rakoff interjects: There is an exception that federal judges are 100% right.
(laughter)
Vogt: I’ve learned that the the hard way, your honor.
Vogt reads an exchange between Bennet and Douthat, who criticized the editorial for suggesting a link between Palin and the Loughner shooting.
Bennet promised to "get to the bottom" of it in the morning.
"I see your point it sounds like political score-keeping," he wrote.
Asked if he was every disciplined, Bennet replies: "No, there was no disciplinary action."
"I appeared before the board of directors to take responsibility for the mistake and apologized," Bennet says, adding he wasn't asked to do that.
He says he doesn't know whether that qualifies as a reprimand, "but it felt like one."
Q: Did you ever apologize to Gov. Palin?
A: My hope is as a consequence of this process, now I have.
During pre-trial arguments, the NYT's lawyer argues that someone known for saying "Don’t retreat, reload" will have a hard time arguing that she sustained emotional damage in the face of criticism about her gun rhetoric.
The NYT wants to grill Palin on rhetoric like that to establish that Palin "plays in the public field" and "uses hyperbole" to make her points.
Q: When you used the word “incite,” were you intending to convey only that “incite” meant direct orders?
A: No, no. You can incite hate. You can incite anger. You can incite passion. You can even incite doubt. [...] Incite requires an object as a verb.
Bennet:
"We were focused on [...] rhetoric on the left, which had become much hotter in the period. Things were worse. Things are worse today than they were then in 2017. [...]
We were focused on rhetoric on the left—and the right, but particularly on the left that day."
The Michael Avenatti jury returns a note suggesting that there's one female holdout juror, whom the rest of the panel says is refusing to deliberate and won't consider the evidence.
Avenatti moves for a mistrial.
Judge Furman just denied that motion.
The judge considers instructing them not to be swayed by sympathy or emotion.
Avenatti objects.
Furman asks wryly whether it's Avenatti's position that a juror should let sympathy or emotion interfere with clear thinking.
Furman says Avenatti seems to believe the holdout is leaning toward acquittal.
For all he knows, the judge says, the juror allegedly swayed by emotion is in favor of conviction.