RALEIGH, N.C. (WGHP) — North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson announced a multi-million dollar lawsuit against both a major news network and a local musician over multiple published reports that Robinson claims are defamatory. On Tuesday, Robinson and his attorney, Jesse Binnall, who represented former Pres. Donald Trump in multiple cases including his unsuccessful attempts to have the 2020 election thrown out, announced in a Tuesday morning news conference that they had filed a defamation lawsuit. They accuse The Assembly and CNN of publishing false articles in September that allege that Robinson frequented a pornographic video store and pornographic message boards at various points in the 1990s and early 2000s. The complaint claims that the defendants — CNN and Louis Love Money, who spoke to The Assembly in September — intentionally shared defamatory statements about Robinson to interfere with the election. You can read the full complaint below: Complaint-2024.10.15Download Louis Love Money On Aug. 11, 2024, local band Trailer Park Orchestra put out a music video for the song "The Lt. Governor Owes Me Money," where the frontman, defendant Money, sings about making a bootleg porn tape for Robinson and says that Robinson still owes him $25. "In the Music Video, a man in a suit, wearing a generic rubber mask of a black man, intended to depict Lt. Gov. Robinson, enters a pornography video store to view and purchase pornographic video," the lawsuit reads. "In the Music Video, Defendant Money repeatedly addresses the song to 'Mark' and to 'Mr. Robinson,' further identifying the subject as the 'first black man' to hold the title of lieutenant governor. The lyrics of the song falsely accuse Lt. Gov. Robinson of owing money for a 'bootleg' porn video that Defendant Money supposedly produced for him, which is the basis for the song’s title." North Carolina political news site The Assembly, which the lawsuit describes as "a major online publication with links to George Soros," posted an article on Sept. 3 entitled "Ex-Porn Shop Employees Say Mark Robinson Was A Regular. He Denies It." It features a picture of Robinson and Money posing together at Planet Fitness. The article's author spoke with Money and other people identified as former video store employees who claim they knew Robinson in the late 90s and early 2000s and that he frequented his video store. Love characterized him in the article as visiting and using the private rental booth almost nightly, sometimes until the early hours of the morning. However, Robinson states in the lawsuit that he categorically did not visit these video shops to buy or rent pornography. He says that, at the time, he was working at Papa John's, and "Nearby was an adult video store where Defendant Money worked. Lt. Gov. Robinson, who has always been a gregarious, outgoing person, made friends with Defendant Money, who also worked the night shift. He would occasionally bring over free pizza and socialize." According to the lawsuit, "Lt. Gov. Robinson was not spending hours at the video store, five nights a week. He was not renting or previewing videos, and he did not purchase 'bootleg' or other videos from Defendant Money. When Robinson managed the closing shift, usually closing at around midnight, he went home after work so that he could wake up at a reasonable hour and spend time with his wife and two young children. Robinson stopped working at Papa John’s in or about early 2001, and from then until 2022 he never saw Defendant Money again." This, the lawsuit states, was the nature of their relationship. In 2022, they bumped into each other at Planet Fitness and, while Robinson did not specifically remember Money, he took a photo with him which was then used in the article. CNN Then, 16 days after The Assembly's article was published, CNN published "I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum." The CNN article alleges that Robinson made a range of comments that vary from identifying himself as a "black Nazi," insulting Martin Luther King Jr. and voicing a desire to own slaves. The article also alludes to the existence of sexually explicit comments that CNN would not publish due to their graphic nature. In the CNN article, the authors claim that the comments were posted by a user on the pornography website NudeAfrica with the username "minisoldr," the same username Robinson had used on his personal X, then Twitter, and YouTube at the time. The NudeAfrica user disclosed biographical details that match Robinson, including age, location and year of marriage, and used several specific turns of phrases that Robinson has also used. "The CNN Article also falsely claims that Lt. Gov. Robinson, as a married man, created an account on AdultFriendFinder.com, which is a website used to find sexual partners," the complaint states. In addition to NudeAfrica and AdultFriendFinder.com, Robinson's team also referenced claims regarding Ashley Madison, a website for married people seeking affairs, in a news release about the lawsuit. Within a section containing what they described as "key excerpts of the investigation outlined in the complaint," Robinson's team writes, "As CNN is aware, people who create accounts on websites like NudeAfrica, AdultFriendFinder, and Ashley Madison, prefer not to use their own names and identities for obvious reasons." The filed complaint, however, does not contain any references to Ashley Madison. The accusation that Robinson's personal email address was used on the Ashley Madison website was made by Politico explicitly using data from the affair-seeking site's data breach several years ago. The CNN article does not directly reference Ashley Madison. In refuting CNN's claims, Robinson and his legal team say in their news release that CNN's article is "based on data from a dubious website, supposed corroboration from unverified—indeed, unverifiable—data, apparently sourced from hacked, data breach files, obtained from the dark web." The CNN authors link the NudeAfrica account with accounts on the online commenting platform Disqus and Black social networking site Black Planet citing usernames and email addresses that were "publicly leaked online" from Disqus in 2017, according to the article. "CNN had every reason to doubt the veracity of the data upon which it relied," the lawsuit said. "CNN knew that supposed archives from a suspicious website like NudeAfrica were unreliable and failed to meaningfully investigate or digitally scrutinize them. CNN knew that supposedly corroborating information it used was from unverifiable, dark web-sourced data breach files. CNN knew or recklessly disregarded the fact that Lt. Gov. Robinson’s email, passwords, and personal data had been stolen. CNN knew that Lt. Gov. Robinson’s facebook history, which is unlocked and transparent to all, goes back to 2007. CNN knew that just weeks prior to its article, Lt. Gov. Robinson had been targeted by another ludicrous and dubiously sourced hit piece by The Assembly. CNN knew that the election was less than two months away." In the suit, Robinson's team accuses CNN of knowingly publishing false information about him to harm his reputation, and they claim that the timing of both of these articles was deliberately chosen to interfere with the North Carolina gubernatorial election. "Defendant CNN acted with actual malice and reckless disregard for the truth, as demonstrated by Defendant’s antipathy, ill-will, and desire to inflict harm on Lt. Gov. Robinson, CNN’s actual knowledge of the dubious nature and timing of the allegations, its use of unverifiable data to corroborate its reporting, its reckless failure to investigate, and its knowledge of exculpatory information and alternative explanations that it deliberately omitted from the CNN Article," the complaint said. Since the publication of the CNN article, Robinson's legal team says that the news network has refused to issue a retraction or provide the article's source material. "On October 1, 2024, Lt. Gov. Robinson, by counsel, sent a retraction demand to CNN. Two days later, on October 3, 2024, Lt. Gov. Robinson further demanded that CNN produce the source material for its bogus allegations so that it could be subjected to forensic scrutiny and verification. CNN responded the next day, refusing to retract the article and has still declined to produce any of its source material for inspection," the lawsuit alleges. "Almost immediately after the CNN Article broke, the management of NudeAfrica shut down the forum section of its website, where these alleged posts were supposedly archived. It then apparently deleted all messages from minisoldr, thereby removing any evidence that could be investigated. As of this filing, the owner of NudeAfrica has ignored all attempts to contact him." NudeAfrica's homepage reads that "the NudeAfrica free message board is currently closed," and that a paid "members Area" is still available for $24.95. "Lt. Gov. Robinson can never be fully compensated for the damage done by Defendants’ lies. His private and public lives have been devastated. Friends and family have turned their backs on him. He has been humiliated. It is therefore imperative that CNN, Money, and anyone else involved, be held fully accountable, not just to mitigate the harm they have done, but to vindicate Lt. Gov. Robinson and allow him to begin the healing process." He is asking for $50 million in damages from both defendants. While the complaint does not name Robinson's rival in the gubernatorial race, North Carolina District Attorney Josh Stein, the lieutenant governor previously claimed in a video posted to his X account that Stein had "leaked" the information to CNN. The day the CNN article dropped, Robinson said, "The news media is at it again. My opponent is at it again. You all have seen the half-truths and outright lies of Josh Stein on these ads over and over again. Now, a story leaked by him to CNN is appearing now. Let me reassure you. The things that you will see in that story. Those are not the words of Mark Robinson."