Weekly Wrap: Forest on Planned Parenthood, SCV campaign finance complaint, Virginia gun control bills

Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, a Republican candidate for governor, repeated the false claim that Planned Parenthood was founded to "destroy the entire black race." He made the statement during remarks to a group of ministers in Fayetteville on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Meanwhile, Dennis Nielsen, one of three candidates seeking the Republican nomination for a state Senate seat in Nash and Johnston counties, not only had a domestic violence protection order filed against him by his wife, he allegedly refused to speak to a female reporter of The Wilson Times about his case and also reportedly told one of his opponents, Rep. Lisa Stone Barnes, R-Nash, that she's not qualified to hold a Senate seat because she's a woman.

Outside of the campaigns, a campaign finance complaint was filed against the state chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the group in the $2.5 million deal to take control of the "Silent Sam" statue that had stood for more than a century on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus before protesters pulled it down in August 2018. The complaint alleges that the nonprofit was funneling money to members to donate to its affiliated political action committee, which also would violate its tax status.

Finally, before the massive rally in Richmond, Va., to oppose various gun control measures proposed in the Democratic-controlled legislature there, 50 Republican members of the North Carolina House signed a statement to support gun rights in Virginia. But few of the North Carolina lawmakers knew what the bills in the Virginia legislature would do.