Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s embattled Republican gubernatorial candidate, rejected offers from tech experts to investigate the CNN report detailing his alleged history of posting racist and bizarre comments to an online pornography forum, according to a new report published Monday.
The revelation comes on the same day the sitting lieutenant governor threatened legal action against the cable network.
On Monday, local station WRAL reported that Robinson initially rejected multiple offers from information technology experts to investigate the online posts. Sources familiar with the campaign told the Raleigh news station that Robinson’s refusal sowed doubt among his campaign’s ranks and likely played a role in a number of top staffers’ recent decisions to quit.
Robinson is dealing with the fallout after several campaign aides resigned on Sunday—including campaign manager Chris Rodriguez, deputy campaign manager Jason Rizk, finance director Heather Whillier, and general consultant Conrad Pogorzelski III.
The mass exodus has left Robinson with just two campaign spokespeople and a bodyguard on his staff, according to public radio station WUNC.
A spokesperson for the Robinson campaign told WRAL that the account was “totally false,” and said the lieutenant governor was “in the process of retaining aggressive legal counsel to investigate who did this and how,” echoing Robinson’s earlier statement.
Asked Monday by a reporter at a campaign stop in Wilkesboro if he was taking steps to disprove the report, Robinson replied, “We absolutely are. We absolutely are.
Mark Robinson and his wife, Yolanda Hill Robinson, attend a Trump campaign event in Asheville, North Carolina.
Tom Brenner/Getty Images
“We’re in talks right now, everything up to legal counsel to take CNN to task for what they have done to us,” he went on. “We are going after them, OK? We are going to go after them for what they’ve done.
Robinson posted a clip of his own remarks—ironically, from CNN’s newsfeed—to X shortly after. “I am in the process of retaining aggressive legal counsel to investigate who did this and how; we will leave no stone unturned, and will use every legal means to hold CNN accountable for perpetrating these lies,” he wrote in a caption above the video.
“I am not backing down,” Robinson added, “the future of North Carolina depends on it.”
He did not specify in his tweet or his remarks what kind of legal action he planned to take. As of Monday evening, Robinson had not filed a lawsuit against the network.
At the campaign stop, after he’d finished vowing revenge, the Republican candidate turned to the subject of the final election sprint.
“We have five weeks left in this race, folks, and make no mistake about it—we are not going to let CNN throw us off of our mission,” he said, to a few half-hearted whoops from the crowd. “Our mission is to win this race.”
Minutes before the CNN report’s publication on Thursday, Robinson had posted a video statement in which he fiercely denied the forthcoming allegations—among them that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, had typed out a sexual fantasy involving his wife’s sister, and called himself a “black NAZI.” Robinson dismissed the claims as “salacious tabloid trash.”
Reached by the Daily Beast on Monday afternoon, a spokesperson for CNN had no comment.
Hours later, Politico reported that user data collected by the Southern Poverty Law Center showed that the porn forum account in question was tied to an IP location not far from Robinson’s home in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Donald Trump had not publicly addressed the scandal as of Monday. At a weekend campaign event in North Carolina, he did not mention the lieutenant governor, whom he once hailed as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
