Mark Robinson, a Republican running for governor of North Carolina, said this week that he had sued the Cable News Network for $50 million for slander because of claims they made about him.
The CNN story said that they had found Robinson’s screen name on a website for people who like pornography. The screen name said a lot of racist and sexual things on the message board.
“Even with this attack, we expect to win this election.”
Robinson said the screen name had nothing to do with him, CNN was part of “a coordinated attack with the goal of derailing his campaign for governor,” and he wanted up to $50 million in damages.
The Republican has said that the story is a “high-tech lynching” and that CNN is behind it because they don’t like his policies.
Robinson’s lawyer, Jesse Binnall, said, “Now that a lawsuit has been filed, we will use every tool at our disposal, including the subpoena power, to keep looking for the facts.”
Polls showed that Robinson was 16 percentage points behind the Democratic candidate, making it even less likely that he would be elected. If he won, Robinson would be the first black governor of North Carolina.
Robinson told the press at a news conference with his lawyer, “We expect to win this election despite this attack.”
CNN said that the sex story had information about Robinson’s life that matched up with the lewd story, as well as strange ways of speaking. It also said that he used the same screen name on other accounts that were connected to Robinson.
Robinson’s lawsuit said that CNN put out a story “based on data from a random website, supposed corroboration from unverifiable data, apparently gotten from hacked, data breach files from the dark web.”
After the CNN story, former President Donald Trump has taken a step back from Robinson. Several other Republicans have also tried to distance themselves from his campaign.
