Mark Robinson is dropping his lawsuit against CNN — and potentially calling it quits on his political career, a stunning reversal for a man once seen as a rising star in national conservative politics.
The former North Carolina lieutenant governor and Republican gubernatorial candidate had sued the news network for defamation over its reporting late in the 2024 election that Robinson allegedly wrote racist comments on a pornographic website.
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On Friday, Robinson dismissed his lawsuit and said in a written statement that it would be "futile" to continue pursuing his allegation that CNN defamed him. But he said he was pleased that the work until now by his legal team has uncovered enough evidence to give his family "tremendous closure and peace."
In the 2026 midterms, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) will be up for reelection. Many conservative activists in the party base dislike Tillis and had been hoping Robinson would challenge him in the Republican primary. But Robinson said Friday he wouldn't run for Senate or any other office in 2026, and he might never run for office again at all.
"While it has been the honor of a lifetime to serve the people of North Carolina, the continued political persecution of my family and loved ones is a cost I am unwilling to continue to bear," Robinson wrote, later adding: "I will not run next year, nor do I have plans to seek elected office in the future."
The state's first Black lieutenant governor and the only Black Republican to hold any major political position in North Carolina since Reconstruction, Robinson was scraping by in blue collar jobs before he rose to political fame after video of an impassioned gun rights speech he gave at a Greensboro City Council meeting in 2018 went viral online.
His booming oratory style and humble biography — growing up in poverty with a single mom, losing his factory job to foreign outsourcing as an adult — made him relatable to voters in a way that many other politicians can't copy. Republican President Donald Trump endorsed Robinson in the 2024 primary for governor, calling him "Martin Luther King on steroids."
But within months, Trump would stop inviting Robinson to speak or even appear at his campaign stops in North Carolina. Some GOP insiders suspected that Trump feared Robinson's brand had become so toxic he could bring down Trump with him, at least in this one crucial presidential swing state.
CNN reporting and fallout
CNN reported on Sept. 19 that Robinson, using an alias, referred to himself as a “Black Nazi,” called civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. a racial slur and called for the reinstatement of slavery in the comments section of a pornographic website called Nude Africa. The account CNN connected to Robinson also appeared to have made a number of highly explicit comments on the site.
Robinson denied the claims and sued, initially seeking $50 million in damages. His team claimed that “any person could have purchased and/or used Lt. Gov. Robinson’s data to create accounts all over the internet, but did not offer any evidence to support the claim that the posts were the result of a data breach."
Robinson had also suggested that perhaps someone had used artificial intelligence to impersonate him in the comments, which appear to have been written more than a decade ago. Some fellow Republican politicians urged Robinson to put forward a more compelling defense, and eventually some supporters chose to part ways.
Robinson was the Republican Party's nominee for governor in the 2024 elections. He lost in a landslide to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, whose 15-point margin of victory made it the most lopsided race for governor in nearly half a century.
Stein had been leading Robinson in polls before the CNN story came out, due in part to Robinson's more public history of other incendiary comments targeting Jews, Muslims, women, LGBTQ people and others. But the CNN story drew national attention, and led to the Republican Governor's Association — which had spent millions on ads in the race and had been prepared to spend millions more — publicly disavowing Robinson and announcing it would stop funding ads for him.
Donors demanded refunds
New campaign finance records made public this month and analyzed by WRAL also show how Robinson's own once-formidable political fundraising ability withered in the wake of the CNN report.
In the crucial final stretch of 2024, campaign records from the fourth quarter show, Robinson raised just $159,000. Stein raised $6.5 million in the same period.
Robinson also faced more than 100 demands for refunds, totalling nearly $20,000, from people who had previously given him money. At the same time, as his campaign began canceling appearances at parades and festivals all over the state, the campaign was able to claw back about $1,300 in refunds for itself.
When it came to spending donors’ money, the new fourth quarter records also show, the Robinson campaign’s focus shifted from buying ads to hiring lawyers. The campaign made payments to three different law firms in the final weeks of the election, including the firm owned by Jesse Binnall, Robinson's lawyer for the CNN lawsuit.
- Robinson's campaign paid Binnall’s firm $100,000 on Sept. 24 — the same day Robinson announced his hiring — plus another $17,000 after the election in December.
- It's unclear how much more money, if any, the campaign has paid Binnall's firm in January. Those records aren't public yet. The most recent available data shows Robinson's campaign ended 2024 with $250,000 left in the bank.
- The campaign also spent more than $32,000 at Capitol City Club in downtown Raleigh, the new records show, for Robinson’s election night watch party as well as for a “holiday party” that was billed after the election, in December.
The campaign also paid the state elections board $35,000 in December to settle an investigation into alleged campaign finance violations — during Robinson’s 2020 campaign for lieutenant governor — including findings that he improperly took hundreds of dollars from the 2020 campaign for cash withdrawals or personal purchases.