The evening the opinion piece was published, James Bennet – the former editor of the editorial pages – emailed editorial section journalist Elizabeth Williamson, who wrote the first draft of the piece, saying that he “really reworked this one,” documents revealed in court Friday showed, the Daily Mail reported.
Bennet is named as the sole defendant in the lawsuit.
Later that same night Wegman emailed Williamson telling her the article was “superb” and “finely tuned.”
“My anger about US gun culture is so intense that I can’t be calm,” he wrote to the Williamson.
She replied that the article was “mostly a James (Bennet) production.”
Later that night, Williamson received an email from a Times fact checker, who indicated that the paper had previously written about Palin’s PAC’s map in 2010, “months before” the mass shooting in Tucson. The fact checker’s note was apparently ignored.
Just before 11 p.m. after the editorial had been published Wegman emailed Williamson again, writing “The gun rights brigade is having a seizure over the Giffords – Loughner – Palin link.”
