WASHINGTON ― North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson said Tuesday that he has filed a $50 million lawsuit against CNN after the news site reported on years of disturbing comments he appeared to have made on a porn site forum.
Standing with his attorney, Robinson, who is currently the state’s lieutenant governor, said he’s suing for defamation after a CNN report last month uncovered troubling comments he apparently made in a forum on a porn site, Nude Africa, including referring to himself as a “black Nazi” and describing being sexually aroused by spying on women in showers.
The report also appeared to show Robinson calling himself a “perv” who likes pornography featuring transgender people ― a sharp contrast with his present-day transphobic rhetoric .
“What this amounts to is, to quote Clarence Thomas, this is a high-tech lynching on a candidate who has been targeted from day one by folks who disagree with me politically and want to see me destroyed,” Robinson said at a press conference. “We are going to take these first steps to fight against what we consider to be one of the greatest examples of political interference in the state’s history and quite possibly this nation’s history.”