North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson hired an attorney who previously worked for former President Trump to investigate allegations that Robinson made controversial comments on a porn website.
Robinson, the current Republican lieutenant governor running against Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein to replace Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in the battleground state, hired the Binnall Law Group from northern Virginia to investigate the claims raised in a CNN report published earlier this week.
“Normally, something like this, an investigation, you know, run by the Department of Justice and the FBI would take months or years,” Binnall told Fox News Digital. “We can’t do that in this case because the voters need an answer before the election. And so we are going to move very quickly and still give them a very fulsome report.”
“He absolutely denies saying any of the things that are in the CNN piece,” Binnall said of Robinson. “What my investigation is going to do is we are going to follow the facts. We are going to investigate this strenuously. We are going to leave no stone unturned. We’re going to be very, very aggressive. And the citizens of North Carolina deserve nothing less than a full investigation of this matter, which is what we are going to do.”
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North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson takes the stage before former President Trump at a campaign event on Aug. 14, 2024, in Asheville, North Carolina. (Grant Baldwin/Getty Images)
“It’s been made very clear to us that we have the full ability and full resources to do that investigation. And if at the end of that investigation, it ends up that the reporting from CNN and other outlets is false, then we will take full and appropriate action based on that,” Binnall said. “One of the problems with these October surprise hype reporting pieces on someone is it doesn’t give you the full amount of time to fully respond, to show the voters that the allegations were just wrong and that the voters could end up being deceived. And so, for that reason, my team understands the importance of moving quickly – very, very quickly and decisively in order to get to the truth, in order to get to a point where we can have full accountability for the true facts of this case.”
“My firm does a lot of defamation work for people all over the country,” Robinson’s attorney added. “And one thing that’s very important for everyone to know is that defamatory speech is not free speech.”
The CNN report claimed to have uncovered comments Robinson made more than a decade ago on a porn site messaging board, including describing himself as a “black NAZI;” saying he enjoyed transgender pornography; saying that he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama in 2012; and criticizing the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.”
Robinson has denied saying those words, but Republicans have begun to distance themselves from the candidate, who, if elected, would be North Carolina’s first Black governor. Trump did not mention Robinson, who he endorsed before the March primary and has spoken at other Trump events, during the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, Saturday.
The Republican Governors Association on Monday said it was not renewing its ad buy in North Carolina. In an X post Wednesday, Robsinson said he spoke with Republican leaders across the state and made it clear that “this is an election about policies, not personalities. Now is not the time for intra-party squabbling and nonsense.”
“The allegations against me are outright lies, fabricated to distract voters from Josh Stein’s disastrous record,” Robinson said in a statement to Fox News Digital regarding the investigation. “The great people of North Carolina deserve the truth, and I am fully committed to ensuring they get it with complete transparency.”
Though the probe is in its early stages, Binnall, who also has represented former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., in the past, said that his investigators include a former FBI agent, and that they are working expeditiously. Though he does not know yet where the investigation will lead, Binnall said he could involve the FBI or the Justice Department if appropriate.
Trump campaign attorney Jesse Binnall arrives for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing to discuss election security and the 2020 election process on Dec. 16, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)
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“We are at the very beginning of our investigation right now,” Binnall told Fox News Digital. But the one thing that I know from my years as a lawyer is that it is very normal for people, especially in politics, to be able to skew the facts in order to tell a particular narrative. And there’s any number of different ways with technology and other ways out there right now that this information could be manipulated. We do not know the full extent of what that might be yet.”
Binnall did not point a finger at CNN, but rather claimed that “there are left-wing actors in this country that have in their playbook time and again to lie and mislead the American people by dropping stories and allegations late in the political cycle and trying to mislead people,” As examples, he cited claims put forth in the media before the 2020 election that the Hunter Biden laptop story might have been disinformation, as well as unproven allegations that Trump colluded with Russia before the 2016 election.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump kisses his granddaughter Carolina Trump as he speaks at a campaign event at Wilmington International Airport in Wilmington, N.C., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Chris Seward)
“Wait to see how the facts develop. Wait and see. And judge for yourself, because these are very scandalous allegations,” Binnall said. “I think there’s a reason that they weren’t brought out until very late in the campaign. But we’re going to get to the bottom of it, and so for the voters in North Carolina, I just say to wait and judge the facts for yourself.”
When the CNN report first dropped, Robinson published a video statement comparing it to the “high-tech lynching” that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said he faced when, during his Supreme Court confirmation process, he was accused of sexually harassing Anita Hill.
Binnall agreed that that is what his client is up against. “Clarence Thomas went through hell. I think all Americans know that now. It was a high-tech lynching against Clarence Thomas, an attempt to try to destroy a very, very good man in that very well could be the same thing here,” Binnall said. “But rather than guess what the facts are going to be, we are going to follow the facts. We are going to let the facts guide us in this case.”
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“When someone has nothing to hide, what they want is a full investigation,” Robinson’s attorney added. “And that’s why I think it’s important that Mr. Robinson went right out to us in order to conduct this investigation and then to take appropriate action based on those results.”
