Robinson sues CNN, seeking $50M over allegations of racist comments on porn site

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson on Tuesday filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN over a published report that alleged Robinson made racist and sexually explicit comments on a pornographic website more than a decade ago.

The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, argued that the network failed to follow journalistic standards and interfered in the state’s gubernatorial election when it reported on Sept. 19 that Robinson, using an alias, referred to himself as a “Black Nazi” and called for the reinstatement of slavery in the comments section of a pornographic website called Nude Africa.

Robinson, the state’s Republican nominee for governor, had previously denied allegations made in the report, referring to them as “salacious tabloid lies.” He’s seeking at least $50 million in damages for reputation harm, saying the political fallout created by the report has caused “mental anguish, distress and anxiety.”

CNN reported that it tracked a username associated with the comments to Robinson's name and other identifying information. The network reported that the username used on Nude Africa was the same as one Robinson used on public social media websites, including Twitter. But Robinson contends the article was based on data from what he describes as a dubious website and unverifiable information obtained on the dark web.

He added that anyone could have hacked into his email and found other details needed to impersonate him.

Despite denying the allegations to CNN, the network “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 said. “Any person could have purchased and/or used Lt. Gov. Robinson’s data to create accounts all over the internet.”

CNN declined to comment. A representative of Nude Africa didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

The lawsuit doesn’t offer any theories as to who would’ve wanted to impersonate Robinson on an obscure porn site years before he entered politics, or why.

It contends that CNN published its article because of political motivations held by the institution itself to derail Robinson’s political career.

“His private and public lives have been devastated,” the lawsuit says. “Friends and family have turned their backs on him. He has been humiliated.”

During a news conference announcing the lawsuit, Robinson called himself the victim of a "high-tech lynching," echoing a phrase made famous by now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a fellow Black Republican, describing Thomas' contentious 1991 confirmation hearing.

“We are glad to take these first steps to fight back against what we consider to be one of the greatest examples of political interference in this state's history and quite possibly this nation's history,” Robinson said.

Trump lawyer on the case

Defamation claims require proof that the claims are false and were made maliciously; the burden of proof is higher for public figures like politicians than for everyday citizens. Robinson has yet to provide evidence to back up his claims. He said Tuesday that his lawsuit would seek to do that.

Robinson initially rejected supporters’ offers to investigate the origins of the Nude Africa comments, people directly familiar with the matter told WRAL last month. He then hired a law firm to probe the matter.

"We are going to get to the bottom of what's going on here," Robinson said Tuesday, before handing the mic over to Jesse Binnall, his Virginia-based attorney who previously represented former President Donald Trump, once an ally of Robinson.

Binnall called the CNN report a “journalistic hit job.” He said the network declined a request for a retraction and a request to review its source material.

“We expect to find that there are more bad actors that have been involved in this process to interfere with the election, and there is more to come,” Binnall said Tuesday.

Before the CNN report, Robinson had been trailing opponent Democrat Josh Stein in the race for governor. After the report, Robinson saw supporters slip away, polling showed.

WRAL asked Stein about Robinson’s previous legal threats against CNN at a campaign event Monday. "I think the discovery in that case will be very interesting,” Stein said, declining to comment further.

If a judge decides the case can move forward, the parties would begin the discovery phase. Under that process, the parties would exchange information relevant to the case. For example, Robinson could seek documents related to CNN’s reporting, and the cable network could seek data on Robinson’s computers.

Greensboro video claims

The lawsuit also targets Louis Money, a former Greensboro adult video store employee who was among half a dozen people who told news magazine The Assembly this year that, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Robinson frequently came into two Greensboro stores to watch and buy explicit videos. Robinson sought to shoot down those claims in the lawsuit.

Money previously told WRAL he went public with his claims — first posted in a song on YouTube — in an attempt to gain notoriety for his band, Trailer Park Orchestra. "I'll be the first to admit because people are asking me, well, 'Did you come up with the song just to make money?' Yes. Yes, I did," Money told WRAL last month. "But it is a true story."

On Tuesday, after Robinson announced the lawsuit, Money told WRAL that neither Robinson nor anyone from Robinson's campaign had reached out to him to ask him to stop speaking since that Assembly article first published weeks ago.

"I wouldn't stop anyway," Money said Tuesday. "You can't stop me from telling the truth, bro.”

Robinson's campaign had originally told reporters that Money's claims were "ridiculous" and that "the extent of their relationship" was that Money sometimes came into the Papa John's Pizza store where Robinson used to work. In his lawsuit Tuesday, however, Robinson acknowledged sometimes visiting an adult video store where Money worked to "bring over free pizza and socialize."

“His story changed, and mine never has,” Money said about Robinson’s admission in the lawsuit that he did sometimes visit the video store.

Robinson's lawsuit focuses heavily on Money's claims of how frequently Robinson visited the adult video store. The lawsuit says 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."

Robinson's lawsuit also claims The Assembly's reporting on Money's claims was false. But it doesn't name the outlet as a defendant. Robinson’s campaign spokesman didn’t respond to a question about whether the campaign had asked The Assembly to retract its article, as Binnall said the campaign did with CNN.

The Assembly's founder and editor-in-chief, Kyle Villemain, defended his publication’s reporting on Tuesday. Villemain said in an interview that, to his knowledge, neither Robinson nor his representatives asked for a retraction after the article was published. He added that there had been “no outreach from the Robinson campaign or [his] legal team” since publication.

“Our story’s built off of five named sources and not any single source,” Villemain told WRAL. “And we stand by our reporting and think it's strong.”

Campaign presses ahead

Robinson has spent recent weeks rebuilding his campaign and his state office, trying to re-energize his effort to become North Carolina’s first Black governor.

Shortly after CNN’s report, many members of Robinson’s campaign and state office staff resigned. The Republican Governors Association — which had spent millions in North Carolina’s gubernatorial race — stopped running ads supporting Robinson. Support for Robinson dropped in the polls, and North Carolina Republicans called on him to disprove the report.

He has since traversed the state, meeting with voters in town-hall-style gatherings.

On social media, Robinson recently targeted critics within the Republican Party.

"If Republicans opposed radical leftists as much as they opposed each other, imagine how much more successful we would be," Robinson said in a social media post on Oct. 9. "Cut the intra-party crap and vote for Republicans up and down the ballot. This isn’t about personality, it’s about policy."

The CNN lawsuit isn’t the only pending legal battle swirling in Robinson’s orbit. A nonprofit run by his wife has been accused of overbilling the federal government by at least $132,000. In some instances the taxpayer-funded charity submitted the same receipts multiple times for reimbursement, a state investigation found, while in other cases the charity asked to be reimbursed for spending that never appeared to have happened.

Robinson’s wife and several other family members were paid salaries based on a cut of the money the charity billed from the government. Robinson has called the investigation politically motivated, an allegation state officials deny. His wife shut down the charity earlier this year but is challenging the state’s findings.

WRAL State Government Editor Jack Hagel and WRAL Capitol Bureau Chief Laura Leslie contributed to this report.