We have worked tirelessly to get to the truth. For the sake of Lieutenant Governor Robinson, his family, and the voters of North Carolina. And then today, in Wake County Superior Court, we filed a defamation lawsuit against the Cable News Network and Lewis Money. [00:00:19] That lawsuit lays out the effort to, as lieutenant governor, said, use a high tech lynching in order to interfere with North Carolina's 2024 gubernatorial election. [00:00:36] I mean, can a man who has referred to himself as a black Nazi really say he's the victim of a lynching? I don't know, but Republican candidate for North Carolina's, gubernatorial race, Mark Robinson, and his lawyer, his name is Jesse Binnall, [00:00:54] basically announced yesterday that they are filing a defamation lawsuit against CNN for their evidence based reporting on posts that he had put on a porn website. They were terrible posts. [00:01:10] We're going to get back into what the post said, but I am so happy that he filed this lawsuit. John, I am so happy discovery is going to be lit, I can't wait. Well, I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but my prediction would be [00:01:29] it will never come to that because I don't think this lawsuit is intended to win. I don't think it's intended to last. I think you do a lawsuit like this to get a press conference as a Hail Mary to possibly give you a chance to win, which he won't. [00:01:46] And then as soon as you're past the election, he's going to drop it because he doesn't want the discovery and because he knows he would lose. So I would assume that this thing is going to quietly dust into the wind, probably in less than three weeks. You're probably very right about that. [00:02:01] I also see this as a strategy to try to like, you know, puff up his chest and pretend like he's innocent when like, you used the same email address for legitimate stuff that you were engaging in and the porn site where you were posting disgusting garbage. [00:02:20] Okay, so look, let's do a little refresher here in case anyone missed this story. So last month, CNN published a pretty explosive piece linking the current lieutenant governor, who's now a gubernatorial candidate, to some disturbing and offensive comments on a porn site years ago. [00:02:40] So the comments made on Nude Africa on its messaging boards dated back to 2008 to 2012. The username that Robinson used was Mini Soldier, and he even referred to himself as a perv. [00:02:58] Publicly, he calls for the arrest and mistreatment of members of the transgender community. But on the site, he admitted to loving transgender porn, which there's nothing wrong with that. But it is always interesting what these people are like behind the scenes, [00:03:15] as they say awful things about various communities publicly. He wrote, I like watching. He uses a slur for the transgender community on girl porn that's effing hot. It takes the man out while leaving the man in. And yeah, I'm a perv too. [00:03:32] He also wrote about spying on women, changing when he was a 14 year old, and how he fantasizes about doing it again as an adult. He graphically described his own arousal as an adult, from the memory of secretly peeping on women in a public gym or public gym showers. [00:03:51] As a 14 year old, he recounted the story as a memory. He said he still fantasized about. And then CNN also reported that on this forum discussing black Republicans in October of 2010, Robinson described himself as a black Nazi and argued [00:04:11] that slavery actually wasn't bad. Like just bottom of the barrel. Some of the most disgusting comments you could imagine. Now, he has denied all of this, hence the lawsuit. So what exactly is he hoping to get out of the lawsuit, assuming that [00:04:27] Jon's accurate theory is inaccurate? Well, let's take a look. 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. [00:04:44] And let me say this. There have been those that have tried to interfere with our investigation by stonewalling. And to them I will say that we will use every tool at our disposal now that a lawsuit has been filed, including the subpoena power, [00:05:01] in order to continue pursuing the facts, and you will not be able to hide behind stonewalling, stonewalling. We will get to the truth. We are seeking $50 million in damages for the reputational harm [00:05:17] that has been done to Lieutenant Governor Robinson's good name. Yeah. Okay. Well, this is when the press conference kind of started to take a turn. The lawyer described the article as the CNN piece as recklessly false. [00:05:35] And he gave absolutely no evidence to support that claim. Instead, he gave incoherent answers every time a reporter asked him a legitimate question. Take a look. He denied the story from the beginning. But I mean factually, have you been able to prove that it is not true, [00:05:52] or can you elaborate on that at all? Yeah. What our investigation has shown so far is that, there were a number of inconsistencies that were that were used that went beyond journalistic standards in the way that that CNN, [00:06:12] performed their, their reporting. First of all, let me say that we continue to that Lieutenant Governor Robinson has always said these allegations are completely false. [00:06:27] Our investigation has shown that he is is, quite frankly, right about that. How does he reconcile the fact that his client used the same email address, you know, [00:06:44] the same email address that he uses for other legitimate matters on this site where he was posting disgusting content and commentary? I don't know. But before we get to the next clip, because the reporters would not budge. [00:06:59] I don't know, John. Maybe. Maybe I'm being unfair. I always want to, like, open my mind up to the possibility that maybe I'm being unfair and maybe that lawyer is really hitting it out of the park. What do you think? Yeah. No, I love it. His look, they eventually say he says the allegations are false. [00:07:15] That's a clear refutation. Although Robinson himself referred to them as scurrilous accusations. And I alleged on TDR this morning that you are legally only allowed to refer to allegations as scurrilous if they are true, like you never are. [00:07:32] Going to say something is scurrilous. If you're actually so upset that you're being falsely accused, you're role playing a pirate because this is all a game to you, basically. This is all a game. He's in the background of the shot while the lawyer is talking. He's got this serious look on his face. [00:07:49] But we know so much about this guy right now. We don't know everything. Like, I don't know if he's thinking about transgender porn. Literally. While that press conference is going on, it seems like it's on his mind a lot. But I know you're going to talk about the other lawsuit he's involved in, but just like I, we try to live our lives in a way that we think is honest. [00:08:08] And this guy has gone through the years. But when he was born to when he launched his candidacy. Just running amuck out there on podcasts and pornography stores and weird websites [00:08:23] and then just assuming that'll be fine. That'll never come back to bite me on the ass. And CNN I think was I think they were very responsible in the way they reported this. There have definitely been false accusations based on online activity. And I think at this point, for a serious news organization, the bar [00:08:39] is pretty high to actually report it. This is about as confirmed as anything like this ever could be. Exactly. And if and if it is false and they have evidence, you would think they'd come out swinging with at least a hint of it, a whiff of what it is. - And they got nothing. - Yeah, you're exactly right. [00:08:55] In fact, I'm going to skip ahead a little bit and talk about other evidence linking him to the posts. Not only did he use his actual email address that he uses for other things, he also used his full name. [00:09:11] He used his full name. Who's the idiot here? Like, seriously? Come on. And, the network, meaning CNN, which broke the story, has said it connected the porn site comments to Mr. Robinson [00:09:26] by matching his email address and the username mini soldier to other online accounts belonging to him. He really did work hard to conceal this, didn't he? CNN also reported that the mini soldier account had discussed topics that [00:09:42] corresponded with Mr. Robinson's interests and bio biographical information, such as his age and the length of his marriage. And I'm glad that marriage was at the end of that sentence. Now, as CNN is aware, people who create accounts on websites like Nude Africa [00:09:58] prefer not to use their own names and identities for obvious reasons. Now, you mentioned the other lawsuit. So there's a second individual who is being sued by Robinson, and that individual is Lewis money. [00:10:14] So as you heard from his lawyer earlier, you know, CNN isn't the only one facing this lawsuit. They're suing this man named Lewis. Money. Money was cited and quoted in an article last month in the Assembly, a news website in North Carolina, [00:10:30] saying that Robinson had frequented pornography stores in Greensboro, North Carolina, where Robinson is from, in the 1990s and early 2000. Money told the Assembly that Robinson frequently watched pornography in private booths in those days. Look, I don't like he's suing [00:10:49] because he claims that this is defamatory. I like don't care. I don't care about that at all. Like, I don't care that there are people who consume porn. I don't care that they do it in private booths, like back in the day. You know, that's what men did, I guess. [00:11:06] I mean, I wouldn't have done it, but men are different. The fact that he's going so hard against this guy for simply stating that he would frequent porn shops and go into private rooms is interesting. - What are your thoughts on that, John? - Yeah. [00:11:22] Look, if if this stuff was untrue, which it potentially could be, but basically everything about Mark Robinson makes me pretty sure that it's true. Then I could see why you'd be frustrated about this. Like, if, look, anybody, any candidate could theoretically [00:11:37] face false accusations, and that would be really frustrating. Okay. The issue is that it seems to be true. And there seems to be a lot of corroboration. Okay. And I don't mean just corroboration between the various accusations. All of the stuff that he has admitted to that he's done [00:11:52] and the weird statements he makes. He paints a picture of the sort of guy that this stuff could potentially be true about. More important to me, I would be much more willing to like, consider the unfairness of this. If it actually seemed reasonable to think that this potentially untrue story [00:12:11] is what is throwing the election, but that's just not the case. The dude was already trailing by a lot before this came out, and so you could still be frustrated on a personal level, or maybe because it's like causing problems with your relationship, although she knows all the stuff he's done publicly and said publicly, [00:12:28] and she's been fine with that, so I'm sure they'll be fine. They seem made for each other. But this definitely is not swaying the election, okay. And so to get mad about CNN, as if that's what it's doing is totally fake. And by doing this lawsuit, he's drawing [00:12:44] more attention to the, you know, reporting about the post he put up on Nude Africa. Yeah, that's true. Congratulations. You're really knocking. It out of the park.