Mark Robinson Sues CNN Over Report on Alleged Porn Site Posts

North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson on Tuesday sued CNN over its recent reporting about his alleged racist and sexist posts on a pornography site.

Robinson, North Carolina’s 2024 Republican gubernatorial nominee, filed the lawsuit in Wake County Superior Court over a report that he called defamatory.

Last month, CNN reported that over a decade ago, Robinson allegedly made a series of inflammatory comments on a message board of a pornography site, which included calling himself a “black NAZI” and a “perv.”

Despite Robinson using anti-transgender rhetoric in recent years, he also allegedly said on the messaging board that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography.

Robinson has repeatedly denied making these comments, calling them “salacious tabloid lies” to CNN, and he has vowed to stay in the race for North Carolina governor. In a Tuesday press conference in Raleigh to announce the lawsuit, Robinson again denied writing 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 says, referencing the porn website Nude Africa that CNN alleged Robinson used, according to The Associated Press (AP).

When contacted by the AP, a CNN spokesperson reportedly declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Robinson also sued a singer of a North Carolina punk band who alleged Robinson used to buy pornography at a store the singer worked at in the 1990s and early 2000s. The singer, Louis Love Money, made the allegations in a music video as well as to a media outlet before CNN released its report on September 19.

Josh Stein, North Carolina’s attorney general and the state’s Democratic candidate for governor, had a lead over Robinson in polls when the CNN report was released.

Robinson’s campaign communications director Mike Lonergan blamed the reported posts on Stein and other Democrats in a previous statement to Newsweek.

“Everything Josh Stein [and] the Democrats say about Mark Robinson is either an outright lie or twisted so far out of context it might as well be,” Lonergan said. “The people of North Carolina have had enough lies from career politicians like Josh Stein—and that’s why they’ll elect Mark Robinson governor on November 5.”

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican Party presidential nominee, has endorsed Robinson and once called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.” However, after appearing at Trump campaign events in North Carolina in the past, Robinson has not been seen at Trump rallies in the state since the CNN report was released.

This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.