It’s been more than two weeks since CNN published a bombshell story about pro-slavery and pro-Nazi posts it says Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson wrote on a pornographic website.
And it’s been more than a week since Robinson hired a law firm to refute the report, saying “I fully expect the facts are going to come to light quickly.”
Since then, the devastating impacts of Helene — a tropical storm by the time it hit western North Carolina, but destructive nonetheless — have knocked Robinson’s scandal out of the headlines. And neither he nor the law firm have released any new information related to the CNN report or filed any legal actions over the story.
WUNC asked Robinson’s campaign for an update and a timeline on when the law firm might release its findings, but spokesman Mike Lonergan did not respond to multiple inquiries.
Attorney Jesse Binnall had said in a Fox News interview on Sept. 26 that while some investigations take months, "we can’t do this 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."
Absentee voting by mail is under way, and in-person early voting sites open next week.
Robinson has spent the past week mixing campaign events across the state with visits to Western North Carolina, where he’s been working with the sheriff of Franklin County on a supply delivery effort – and posting frequent social media photos and videos of himself doing it. He has "town hall" campaign events scheduled this week in four counties.
Other Republicans like U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis and Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler have not appeared with Robinson as they too have spent time traveling in hard-hit counties.
Tillis has not made any public statements about the Robinson scandal since he told reporters that Robinson needed to “defend his name” or “in the absence of a defense, we need to move on. We’ll be making that decision this week.”
Tillis told reporters he was setting a deadline of Friday, Sept. 27, for Robinson to take legal action to refute the CNN report. Spokesmen for Tillis did not respond to an inquiry seeking an update this week.
Since the CNN report, Robinson has slipped further behind his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, in multiple polls. The latest RealClearPolling average for the race has Stein up by nearly 16 percentage points.
In addition to the Republican Governors Association stopping its TV ads in North Carolina, campaign ad disclosures for WRAL-TV show that Robinson’s campaign hasn’t run or reserved time for ads after the CNN report came out. His only current campaign ad on Facebook is a pledge to "fight for each and every North Carolinian that is struggling" after the storm, according to the social media site’s ad database.
