Not everyone in the region was happy about the transaction. Tensions simmered almost immediately after local liberals spotted what they saw as partisan, agenda-motivated coverage. The controversy came to a head in 2014, over a proposed development and a contentious local election. Certain liberals in Cold Spring were wary of what the development would do to their community, and even more wary of what they saw as the *P.C.N.R.’*s slanted coverage in favor of it.

Amid the turmoil, the folk singer Dar Williams co-authored with her husband a letter encouraging a few younger locals, who were living in the city, to send in absentee ballots, asking them to vote in favor of a few candidates who were similarly skeptical of the development plans, including town trustee Matt Francisco.

Williams and her husband wrote that Ailes, whom they called “owner of Fox News and of our little newspaper,” was an interested party in the outcome of the election. (Ailes was, in fact, the C.E.O. of Fox News; his wife was the publisher of the P.C.N.R.) “I don’t know if you are too young to remember what Fox News did ten years ago to the war hero, John Kerry, when he ran against George W. Bush . . . they managed to turn him into a coward (the ‘Swiftboat’ attack ads) even as their stories were completely debunked,” the two-page letter read. “They’re using the exact same tactics here in our tiny village.”

“I thought, Why the hell would a man in his position in the world be bothered by a trustee in a village in New York state with a population of 2,015 people?”

A month after the couple sent the letter, and a week before polls opened, portions of it wound up printed on the front page of the P.C.N.R., under the headline “Nasty Campaign Letter Surfaces.” Williams recalls that sections of it were redacted, but the paper left her home address, which was printed at the top of the letter. The article also noted that Francisco had been spotted leaving Williams’s house. Perturbed that someone was checking on his whereabouts, Francisco wrote a post on Facebook later that day explaining that he was worried about being followed. Stephanie Hawkins, a sitting trustee on the town’s board, shared Francisco’s post on her personal Facebook page.

Within 48 hours, Williams received a legal letter asking her to apologize to Roger and Elizabeth Ailes, or face a suit against her for defamation. The letter was sent by Peter Johnson, an attorney who often appeared on Fox News and, according to New York, was a member of the so-called “Black Room.” It said Williams had falsely identified Ailes as the owner of Fox News and of the P.C.N.R., falsely accused him of engineering the Swift Boat campaign, and falsely claimed that he had any interest in the upcoming Putnam County election.

Francisco and Hawkins were also served letters asking them to take down their Facebook posts. Johnson wrote to Hawkins that the contents of her posts were “knowingly false and fabricated,” with the “malicious intent to injure our clients in their trade, office, and profession.” The letter cautioned that if she did not write a retraction for “the libelous statements and an apology for the outrageous and patently false statements made against our clients,” then Ailes would file suit against her for “intentionally, wrongfully, and maliciously [defaming] and [disparaging]” them, and would also seek attorneys’ fees and expenses. Francisco took his post down. Hawkins, on principle, kept hers up.

Over the course of 12 days, the letter was followed up with two more, the last of which was sent to her place of work. “I thought, Why the hell would a man in his position in the world be bothered by a trustee in a village in New York state with a population of 2,015 people? And it’s based on a precarious association with my personal social media,” Hawkins said. “What is wrong with this person?”

In the end, the developer’s proposal was approved and Ailes’s lawyers dropped their threats after the election. But many in Cold Spring have not forgotten the incident. Hawkins was in her office when she saw the news that Roger Ailes had resigned from Fox News. A cry slipped out of her, one loud enough that it prompted a co-worker to come by to make sure she was O.K. “It was kind of a relief,” she said. “That self-righteous ass doth protest too much. It has given me a very strong sense of Schadenfreude.”

Her neighbor, Dar Williams, expressed her own reaction in words worthy of a folk singer. “When these allegations came up, that sense of cruelty, that I-will-humiliate-you, I-will-expose-you, I-will-find-you-at-your-most-vulnerable-place rang true for me. It’s about how one uses and abuses power,” she said. And until now, “It was about power that hurts the most without leaving fingerprints, so that people stayed silent.”