RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson announced a lawsuit Tuesday against CNN over its recent report alleging he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board, calling the reporting reckless and defamatory. But as Channel 9 discovered, Robinson’s team has yet to prove the comments were not actually his.
The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, comes less than four weeks after a television report that led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. Robinson announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh.
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“This is a high-tech lynching on a candidate who has been targeted from day one by folks who disagree with me politically and want to see me destroyed,” he alleged.
Robinson is seeking $50 million and alleges CNN intentionally defamed him.
Channel 9 obtained a copy of the 16-page lawsuit on Tuesday. In it, Robinson’s team doesn’t provide any proof that CNN’s findings were wrong. No exhibits were given and no detailed explanation was provided proving that the posts were not made by him.
It claims 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.”
CNN declined to comment when Channel 9′s Hunter Sáenz asked for a response to the lawsuit.
The CNN report 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 that he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama, and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.”
The comments also allege Robinson wanted to reinstate slavery, saying, “slavery is not bad” and that he’d “buy a few.”
For weeks, Robinson has denied it and hired a law firm to investigate and prove it was not him. His attorney said the lawsuit was the first step and called the defamation case election interference.
“A left-wing media outlet is going to do everything they can to stop this man from being governor because they know that this man has the ability to connect with voters in a way that, quite frankly, scares them,” Jesse Binnall said.
After the bombshell report, most of Robinson’s campaign staff and some of his staff in the lieutenant governor’s office resigned.
Robinson’s opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, spoke about the CNN report at a meet and greet in Hickory.
“Obviously we will see what happens. There will be interesting discovery in that case,” Stein said.
“Do you think something will come of this lawsuit though?” Sáenz asked.
“I would be shocked,” Stein said.
A former adult video store employee, who was the source of another story alleging Robinson was a regular customer at a porn shop, is also being sued. Sáenz tried reaching out to him as well but hasn’t heard back.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
(WATCH BELOW: Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, hospitalized, treated for burns, sources say)
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