North Carolina governor candidate Mark Robinson sues CNN over report about posts on porn site

RALEIGH, N.C. — Lt. Governor of North Carolina Mark Robinson announced a lawsuit against cnn on tuesday over its recent report he alleged that he posted explicit racist and sexual messages on the message board of a pornographic website, calling the posting reckless and defamatory.

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 candidate Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. Robinson announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh.

CNN “chose to publish despite knowing or recklessly ignoring that Lieutenant Governor Robinson’s data – including his name, date of birth, passwords and the email address allegedly associated with the NudeAfrica account – had previously been compromised due to multiple data breaches,” the lawsuit states. states.

CNN declined to comment, spokesperson Emily Kuhn said in an email.

Polls at the time of the CNN report already showed Democratic rival Josh Stein, the incumbent attorney general, ahead of Robinson. Early in-person voting begins statewide Thursday, and more than 50,000 completed absentee ballots have been received so far.

The CNN report stated that Robinson left statements on the message board more than a decade ago in which he partially referred to himself as a “black NAZI,” said he enjoyed transgender pornography, said he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama, and mentioned Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “worse than a maggot.”