Ex-porn shop worker wants defamation claim lodged by North Carolina lieutenant governor dismissed

RALEIGH, N.C. — A former porn shop worker who was accused by North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of defamation has asked a court to throw out the lawsuit claim against him, calling the politician’s allegations “bizarre” and his demand for at least $50 million in damages a violation of civil court rules.

Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, filed a lawsuit in Wake County court Tuesday against CNN and Louis Love Money, of Greensboro, saying they published “disgusting lies” about him.

The lawsuit identified a CNN report last month that Robinson made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago. Weeks before CNN’s report, Money alleged in a music video and in a media interview that for several years starting in the 1990s, Robinson frequented a porn shop Money was working at, and that Robinson purchased porn videos from him.

Attorneys for Money, in filing a dismissal motion Wednesday, said that Robinson’s lawsuit violated a procedural rule that requires that a person seeking punitive damages state initially a demand for monetary damages “in excess of $25,000.”

The motion said the rule is designed to “prevent excess demands from leaking publicly in the media and tainting the judicial process.” Violating the rule, attorneys Andrew Fitzgerald and Peter Zellmer wrote, may “have been for the very purpose of creating media attention for Mr. Robinson’s campaign.”

Otherwise, the attorneys also are seeking a dismissal on the grounds that the allegations in the lawsuit, even if they were true, fail to establish a cause of action against Money.

“The complaint contains many impertinent and bizarre allegations,” they wrote.

Asked for a response to the motion, Robinson’s campaign referred to Tuesday’s news release announcing the lawsuit. In it, Robinson said assertions from “grifters like Louis Love Money are salacious tabloid trash.”

Money on Tuesday said he stood by what he had said as truthful. CNN declined to comment on the lawsuit when it was filed and had not responded to it in court as of Thursday.

Robinson is running against Democratic nominee Josh Stein in the campaign to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

The CNN report led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. Most of the top staff running Robinson’s campaign and his lieutenant governor’s office quit following the CNN report, and the Republican Governors Association stopped supporting Robinson’s bid.

The network report said it matched details of the account on the message board to other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, a known email address and his full name. CNN also reported that details discussed by the account holder matched Robinson’s age, length of marriage and other biographical information.

The lawsuit alleges that CNN published its report despite knowing, or recklessly disregarding, that Robinson’s personal data was previously compromised by data breaches.