CNN wants the North Carolina lieutenant governor's defamation lawsuit against it thrown out [View all]

Source: AP

Updated 3:38 PM EST, November 22, 2024


RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — CNN wants a court to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson that attacks its report that he made explicit posts on a pornography website’s message board. The network says Robinson presented no evidence that the network believed its story was false or aired it recklessly.

The September report says Robinson, who ran unsuccessfully for governor this month, left statements over a decade ago on the message board in which, in part, he referred to himself as a “black NAZI” and said he enjoyed transgender pornography. The report also says he preferred Adolf Hitler to then-President Barack Obama and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.”

Robinson, who was seeking to become the state’s first Black governor, said he didn’t write those posts and sued in October, just before early in-person voting was to begin.

While filing a dismissal motion Thursday in Raleigh federal court, attorneys for CNN said Robinson’s arguments suggesting he was the likely victim of a computer hacking operation that created fake messages would require a series of events that is not just “implausible, it is ridiculous.”

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-lieutenant-governor-defamation-lawsuit-e5d045afbf73ac5ac2d92a8f34d8a848