Embattled Republican Candidate Mark Robinson Sues CNN Over Report That Tanked His Career

North Carolina Lt. Governor, and current Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mark Robinson has filed a lawsuit against CNN over their damning report of his alleged past online activity. The lawsuit claims that CNN recklessly published the story in spite of the fact that they should have known that Robinson’s data had been compromised in data leaks years ago. Technically, that’s not something CNN would have or could have known, but even if they did, it doesn’t change the story or prove that they were wrong. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains the lawsuit.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Mark Robinson, the embattled Republican gubernatorial candidate for North Carolina. And the current Lieutenant governor of North Carolina has finally decided that after several weeks of not doing anything about it, he is in fact suing CNN for defamation over their massive report that showed comments he allegedly posted on a, uh, adult website over a decade ago. Now, when that story came out, of course, and we saw these comments from Mark Robinson, many of which i, I can't necessarily repeat here, uh, but he did trash Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And he said he would prefer Hitler over Obama. He also expressed his, uh, tastes in certain adult film styles, but either way, it was a pretty bad report that painted this dude in a negative light that also, of course, caused pretty much the entire Republican party to distance themselves from him, which came at a time when he was already losing the gubernatorial race, I think by like six points, up to nine points in certain polls to Democratic opponent Josh Stein.

So yeah, things were already going bad for Mark Robinson, then this report came out and made them so much worse. So he is suing them for defamation because by God, they should have known that all of this was false. But is it according to the lawsuit, CNN chose to publish despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that Robinson's data, including his name, date of birth, passwords, and the email address supposedly associated with a nude Africa account, were previously compromised by multiple data breaches. So, you know, his, uh, his data had been stolen at, at some point. And uh, so they obviously, whoever stole his data, those are the people that made the accounts, right? They just used his email address and his name and his date of birth and all of that information, uh, to post on this website. It wasn't him. It was the, oh, those hackers, they got it all. Because why would you need to do that, right? I mean, if you wanna sign up for an adult website, just go make yourself a quick throwaway email account on one of the countless websites where you can do that and just sign up. When these comments were posted, Mark Robinson was not a somebody. He was in fact a nobody.

So it would serve no purpose for somebody to steal his email address for the sole purpose of posting horrible comments when he wasn't a public figure, right? Like none of their reasoning in

This lawsuit makes any sense because I believe probably it's bs. Now, did he have his data stolen? Sure, we all have, like, I've been a part of data breaches, but I mean, honestly, if you were signed up for any website at all, you've been a part of a data breach, let's be honest with that. Uh, that's not a valid legal excuse. And furthermore, since you were the one suing for defamation, you have to prove that you didn't do these things. How are you going to prove in court that this wasn't you? Like you can't, even if it actually wasn't you proving that it wasn't you proving a negative is like not something you can really even do, but here's why they're filing this lawsuit. It's not about defamation. It's to cast doubt on the story before the election, because obviously we're not gonna get a resolution to this lawsuit before the election.

You know, you're not gonna have a chance for a judge and jury to say, Nope, you're totally making this up. We rule against you, you fail. That'll happen months, maybe even a year or two down the road. But filing the lawsuit now, right before the election, may cast enough doubt on it to make some of those North Carolinians think, oh, whoa, I guess he didn't do it because he's suing them.