Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit Tuesday against CNN and a man who claims Robinson frequented a porn shop two decades ago, saying both played a role in efforts to intentionally damage his campaign for governor.

“We are glad to take these first steps to fight back against what we consider to be one of the greatest examples of political interference in this state’s history, and quite possibly this nation’s history,” Robinson told reporters in front of his Blount Street office. 

His attorney, Jesse R. Binnall, said Tuesday’s lawsuit may be just the beginning of a complex investigation carried out by a group of lawyers led by a former FBI agent. “We expect to find that there are more bad actors that have been involved in this process to interfere with the election, and there is more to come,” Binnall said.

On Sept. 19, CNN published a report linking the Republican gubernatorial candidate to a series of highly objectionable comments made years ago in the chatroom of a pornographic website. The comments range from referring to himself as a “black NAZI” to describing himself as being aroused by a memory of “peeping” at women in gym showers when he was 14 to having an appreciation of transgender pornography.

Just before the publication of the report, Robinson released a video denying the accusations.

The man named in the lawsuit is Louis Love Money. Money is described as a 52-year-old who sings in a punk band called Trailer Park Orchestra and changed his name from Louis Alen Wooten.

Money was the main source for a September article published in The Assembly alleging that Robinson was a regular at multiple Greensboro-area pornographic video stores two decades ago. Robinson’s campaign dismissed the report as “Democrat activist fan fiction.” 

Central to Money’s story — and a main focus of the lawsuit — is a song by Money’s band that alleges Robinson owes him money for a pornographic tape. The song predates the news story from the publication.

Binnall said that CNN had failed to meet journalistic standards by using unverified information available on the dark web as a result of data breaches. The reporting, according to the lawsuit, was “based on data from a dubious website, supposed corroboration from unverified—indeed, unverifiable—data, apparently sourced from hacked, data breach files.”

The lawsuit refers to CNN as a “politically left-wing media outlet, whose reporting is often indistinguishable from Democrat party talking points” that “opposes politically conservative candidates for office.” 

Binnall said: “I’m saying that a left wing media outlet is going to do everything they can to stop this man from being governor, because they know that this man has an ability to connect with voters in a way that, quite frankly, scares them. They don’t want him to be involved in politics at any level.”

CNN’s reporting caused Robinson damage to his “reputation, public disgrace, humiliation, embarrassment, mental anguish, distress, and anxiety, all of which are ongoing in nature and will be suffered in the future,” according to the lawsuit. 

Binnall said Robinson has always said the allegations about him are completely false. What CNN and others have done is “tantamount to what we truly believe is this journalistic hit job in order to interfere with an election,” he said. 

Asked why most of the staffers on his campaign, as well as in the office of lieutenant governor, quit in the wake of the CNN allegations, Robinson said they were weak. 

“When times of trouble come in this thing we call politics, it separates the strong folks from the weak,” he said. “The weak will turn and run and the strong will stand and fight, and that’s what we’re doing here today.”

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For questions or comments, or to pass along story ideas, please write to Clifton Dowell at [email protected] or @StateAffairsNC on X.

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