North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Republican, sued CNN on Tuesday over its recent report that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website's message board, calling the reporting reckless and defamatory.
The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, comes less than four weeks after a report that led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson's gubernatorial campaign.
Robinson, who announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh with a Virginia-based attorney, has denied authoring the messages.
CNN "chose to publish despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that Lt. Gov. Robinson's data - including his name, date of birth, passwords, and the email address supposedly associated with the NudeAfrica account - were previously compromised by multiple data breaches," the lawsuit states, referencing the website.
Robinson, who would be the state's first Black governor if elected, called the report a "high-tech lynching" against a candidate "who has been targeted from Day 1 by folks who disagree with me politically and want to see me destroyed."
