North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson sued CNN on Tuesday over its report he made remarks on pornographic forum Nude Africa where he called himself a ‘perv’ and ‘black Nazi.’
The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, comes less than four weeks after a report that led MAGA world to distance itself from Robinson after Trump backed the candidate in his bid against Josh Stein to take outgoing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s seat.
Robinson, who announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh with a Virginia-based attorney, has denied authoring the messages.
CNN ‘chose to publish despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that Lt. Gov. Robinson’s data — including his name, date of birth, passwords, and the email address supposedly associated with the NudeAfrica account — were previously compromised by multiple data breaches,’ the lawsuit states, referencing the website.
Robinson, who would be the state’s first Black governor if elected, called the report a ‘high-tech lynching’ on a candidate ‘who has been targeted from Day 1 by folks who disagree with me politically and want to see me destroyed.’
CNN declined to comment Tuesday, spokesperson Emily Kuhn said in an email.
The CNN report, which first aired Sept. 19, said Robinson left statements over a decade ago on the message board in which, in part, he referred to himself as a ‘black Nazi,’ said he enjoyed transgender pornography, said he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama, and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as ‘worse than a maggot.’
The network report said it matched details of the account on the message board to other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, a known email address and his full name.
CNN reported that details discussed by the account holder matched Robinson’s age, length of marriage and other biographical information.
The network also said it compared figures of speech that came up frequently in his public Twitter profile that appeared in discussions by the account on the pornographic website.
Polls at the time of the CNN report already showed Democratic rival Josh Stein, the sitting attorney general, with a lead over Robinson.
Early in-person voting begins Thursday statewide, and more than 57,000 completed absentee ballots have been received so far.
In the same defamation lawsuit Robinson also sued a Greensboro punk rock band singer who alleged in a music video and in an interview with a media outlet that Robinson frequented a porn shop the singer once worked at and purchased videos in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Louis Love Money, the other named defendant, released the video and spoke with other media outlets before the CNN report.
Robinson denies the allegation in the lawsuit, which reads, ‘Lt. Gov. Robinson was not spending hours at the video store, five nights a week.’
‘He was not renting or previewing videos, and he did not purchase ‘bootleg’ or other videos from Defendant Money.’
Money said in a phone interview Tuesday that he stands by his statements and the music video’s content as truthful: ‘My story hasn’t changed.’
The former sex shop employee told The Assembly that Robinson would even bring free pizza and tell jokes in the style of ’80s comic Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay.
The employee even recorded a song about his memory of Robinson’s unpaid tab, called ‘The Lt. Governor Owes Me Money’ with his band Trailer Park Orchestra.
The lawsuit, which seeks at least $50 million in damages, says the effort against Robinson ‘appears to be a coordinated attack aimed at derailing his campaign for governor.’
It provides no evidence that the network or Money schemed with outside groups to create what Robinson alleges are false statements.
Jesse Binnall, Robinson’s lawyer, said that he expects to find more ‘bad actors,’ and that entities, which he did not identify, have stonewalled his firm’s efforts to collect information.
‘We will use every tool at our disposal now that a lawsuit has been filed, including the subpoena power, in order to continue pursuing the facts,’ said Binnall, whose clients have included Trump and his campaign.
In North Carolina courts, a public official claiming defamation generally must show a defendant knew a statement was false or recklessly disregarded its untruthfulness.
Most of the top staff running Robinson’s campaign and his lieutenant governor’s office quit following the CNN report, and the Republican Governors Association, which had already spent millions of dollars in advertising backing Robinson, stopped supporting his bid.
Democrats from presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris to downballot state candidates began running ads linking their opponents to Robinson.
Robinson’s campaign is no longer running TV commercials. He said that ‘we’ve chosen to go in a different direction’ and focus on in-person campaign stops.
Before the CNN report Robinson had already faced accusations that he had promoted a number of conspiracy theories.
He previously claimed in a social media post that he was ‘skeptical’ of ‘everything’ he has seen on TV including 9/11, and the JFK assassination and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.
Robinson also posted he doesn’t believe the moon landing was faked or that 9/11 was an ‘inside job’ but wrote if he found out it was true he ‘would not be surprised.’
The right-wing conservative firebrand has also been a polarizing figure who has come under fire for his past comments on women, Jews, Muslims and members of the LGBTQ community.
Before running for lieutenant governor in 2020, Robinson once wrote that the Black Panther movie was ‘created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists.’
After the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Florida in which 49 people were killed in 2016, he wrote that homosexuality is ‘STILL an abominable sin’ and he would ‘NOT join in “celebrating gay pride.”‘
He also suggested Ellen DeGeneres, who is openly gay, was a ‘top ranking demon.’
In posts after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018, Robinson called the survivors ‘spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN’.
Robinson clinched the Republican nomination for governor in North Carolina on Super Tuesday in March.
Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein is facing off against Robinson in the general election.
Stein spokesperson Morgan Hopkins said Tuesday in a statement that ‘even before the CNN report, North Carolinians have known for a long time that Mark Robinson is completely unfit to be governor.’
Hurricane Helene and its aftermath took the CNN report off the front pages. Robinson worked for several days with a central North Carolina sheriff collecting relief supplies and criticized Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper — barred by term limits from seeking reelection — for state government’s response in the initial stages of relief.
Trump endorsed Robinson before the March gubernatorial primary, calling him ‘Martin Luther King on steroids’ for his speaking ability.
Robinson had been a frequent presence at Trump’s North Carolina campaign stops, but he hasn’t participated in such an event since the CNN report.