Hearing in Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s defamation case against CNN, Greensboro musician set for mid-November

RALEIGH, N.C. (WGHP) — Just over a month after North Carolina’s lieutenant governor announced a defamation lawsuit against both CNN and a former employee of a Greensboro porn shop, the allegations will have a day in court.

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is running as the Republican nominee for governor, announced the lawsuit on Oct. 15 in the wake of two articles that linked the candidate to a Greensboro pornography store and extreme comments on a porn website.

NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson suing CNN for $50 million after ‘high-tech lynching,’ lawyer says

In an article published Sept. 3, Greensboro man Louis Love Money told The Assembly that Robinson would rent or buy pornography from him multiple times a week. Money even released a song with his band Trailer Park Orchestra about Robinson allegedly owing him money.

Robinson’s lawsuit claims that the lieutenant governor did not have any interest in pornography but admits that he spent time with Money in the late 90s while working at a Papa John’s near the porn shop where Money worked.

The Assembly is not named in the lawsuit. However, the suit derides the publication in the complaint as “a publication with ties to George Soros,” a prominent left-wing philanthropist and donor.

About two weeks after The Assembly article was published, CNN releases a bombshell report attributing to Robinson incendiary comments made on the porn forum NudeAfrica, in which the user refers to himself as a “black NAZI!,” disparages Martin Luther King Jr. and wishes for the return of slavery.

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Money filed to dismiss the defamation lawsuit against him the day after it was filed.

Court documents show that a hearing has been set to take up Money’s motion on Nov. 18, 2024. This will be two weeks after the election in which North Carolina voters will decide if Robinson will become the state’s next governor.

In the initial filing of the case, Robinson’s team asked for $50 million in punitive damages against the defendants. An amended filing was submitted on Monday that reduced that total to $25,000.

“When I saw the complaint, I knew that it was improperly filed,” said Queen City News Chief Legal Analyst Khalif Rhodes. “When I saw for $50 million, I was like, hey, this is kind of weird. Why is this happening?”

Rhodes said if you bring this type of claim in North Carolina, you must write it in a certain way.

“It says you need to write the complaint to say in excess of $25,000,” he said. “We are an election season. We trying to show that we’re frustrated with this process and wanting to make people know that I can’t get pushed around.”

There’s no indication this hearing will address Robinson’s complaints against CNN.

One of Robinson’s spokespeople released the following statement to Queen City News. “North Carolina state courts limit plaintiffs to stating in a complaint whether the damages are more than $25,000. The exact amount of damages will be determined by a jury at trial. We have every confidence that the jury will get it right.”

The Robinson campaign also released a list of the amendments.

31. CNN did nothing to verify the posts from NudeAfrica. Indeed, CNN did not even contact the owner of NudeAfrica prior to publishing the CNN Article:

32. CNN either knew or recklessly disregarded the fact that the NudeAfrica website used outdated and highly vulnerable software, easily exploited to plant malicious lies. Indeed, CNN either knew or recklessly disregarded the fact that the NudeAfrica website was hacked in 2018 and appears to use the same vulnerable software it used at the time it was hacked.

33. CNN either knew or recklessly disregarded that NudeAfrica uses Discus Pro 4.10.1 as its website forum software, which was released 18 years ago, and is highly vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation, including but not limited to direct database manipulation, user impersonation, thread integration, timestamp manipulation, content generation, and log manipulation.

34. CNN either knew or recklessly disregarded that the NudeAfrica forum uses Perl 5.016003, an outdated scripting language which is beyond its end-of-life, has not received security updates in almost 10 years, and is commonly known to be vulnerable to remote code execution and security bypass exploitations.

35. CNN either knew or recklessly disregarded that the NudeAfrica forum is obviously vulnerable to manipulation, and that a hacker with rudimentary skills could create, backdate, and integrate forum posts and user accounts on NudeAfrica such as the ones CNN attributed to Lt. Gov. Robinson in the CNN Article.

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