North Carolina's ex-lieutenant governor dismisses lawsuit against CNN, has no plans to run again

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina's former Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson on Friday withdrew his defamation lawsuit against CNN that challenged a report about him making explicit posts on a pornography website’s message board over a decade ago.

The one-sentence voluntary dismissal notice filed by the Republican's attorneys in U.S. District Court in eastern North Carolina didn't give a reason for the decision.

But in a separate statement, Robinson cited a Bible verse while saying that “costly litigation and political gamesmanship by my detractors makes clear that continuing to pursue retribution from CNN is a futile effort."

“It is more honorable to bury an injury than to revenge it,” Robinson said. “While it has been the honor of a lifetime to serve the people of North Carolina, the continued political persecution of my family and loved ones is a cost I am unwilling to continue to bear.”

Robinson, a Republican who unsuccessfully ran for governor in November, had repeatedly denied writing the posts identified in the CNN story that ran in September, when he was still lieutenant governor. He sued a few weeks later. The legal parties were now awaiting a judge’s decision on the network's motion to dismiss Robinson’s case.

Robinson, 56, was considered a rising star in the Republican Party following his unexpected election victory in 2020 — his first bid for elected office — that made him the state's first Black lieutenant governor.

On Friday, Robinson also said “I will not run next year, nor do I have plans to seek elected office in the future.” Robinson had been mentioned as a potential GOP primary opponent to U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis in 2026.

“Today, my family and I are turning the page,” Robinson said.

CNN’s report said Robinson made statements on the message board at the website NudeAfrica in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI” and said he enjoyed transgender pornography. The report said Robinson wrote that he preferred Adolf Hitler to then-President Barack Obama and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.”

Robinson already had a history of inflammatory comments on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. The CNN report nearly collapsed his gubernatorial campaign. Fellow Republicans distanced themselves from him, campaign donations dried up, and campaign and office staff quit. A Robinson campaign report shows that through December it had had paid $117,000 to a Virginia law firm that helped him sue.

Robinson lost to Democrat Josh Stein in November by almost 15 percentage points, and his four-year term was completed at the end of December.

CNN declined to comment on the dismissal and Robinson’s statement Friday.

In legal briefs, Robinson's attorneys alleged that CNN had rushed to run its report without contacting the owner of the NudeAfrica website to confirm what it had found. He said the website had been hacked several years ago and ran on vulnerable, outdated software.

CNN's attorneys had moved the state case to federal court and argued that Robinson failed to meet the legal standard for the defamation of a public official. Generally speaking, a public official claiming defamation must show the defendant knew the statement was false or that it was made with reckless disregard for the truth.

The CNN lawyers described the efforts that network journalists made to connect Robinson to a username on the NudeAfrica site and wrote recently that the network wasn't “obligated to conduct the investigation in the manner he would have preferred.”

The CNN story said the network matched details of the account on the message board to other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, an email address and his full name. The details discussed by the account holder also matched details about Robinson's life, a CNN brief said. And CNN said it found matches of figures of speech used by both the NudeAfrica account holder and in Robinson’s social media posts.

Robinson also sued in the same lawsuit Louis Love Money, a former porn shop worker who alleged in a music video and a media interview that for several years starting in the 1990s, Robinson frequented a porn shop where Money worked and that Robinson purchased porn videos from him. Robinson said that was untrue. Money said he stood by his comments. Claims against Money also were dismissed Friday.