(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Following a CNN-backed smear-campaign that resembled, in large part, the sorts of vicious character attacks leveled against former President Donald Trump, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s woes were compounded over the weekend by the departures of many of his longtime campaign staffers, according to Axios.
Seven of Robinson’s staff announced their resignations, including top adviser Conrad Pogorzelski, after the allegations surfaced late last week that Robinson had made inflammatory and controversial posts, including to a pornographic chatroom.
“I appreciate the efforts of these team members who have made the difficult choice to step away from the campaign, and I wish them well in their future endeavors,” Robinson said in a statement. “I look forward to announcing new staff roles in the coming days.”
Only three staffers remained as of Sunday: two spokespeople and a security guard, said the Axios report.
The offending posts were purportedly made on accounts linked to Robinson’s personal email between 2008 and 2012—six to 10 years before an impassioned pro-Second-Amendment speech at an April 2018 Greensboro City Council launched him into the public spotlight and began his political journey from humble beginnings.
In addition to several posts that hinted at unusual sexual fetishes, Robinson, who is black, also appeared to praise Adolf Hitler and argue that some people deserved to be enslaved, CNN claimed.
He has denied that the posts are his, although he acknowledged in his memoir We Are the Majority! that he had made some provocative posts in the past that were construed as being anti-Semitic, and that he had apologized for them.
Robinson, who was trailing Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein in the polls before the CNN piece, pledged last week to fight on following the scandal, reiterating that projections had “consistently underestimated Republican support in North Carolina for several cycles now and with a large portion of the electorate still undecided as we continue to ramp up our efforts across the state.”
However, some feared that Republican voters might follow suit if the once-rising GOP star fails to confront the allegations in a more direct and forceful way.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. suggested that if they were demonstrably untrue, it was incumbent on Robinson to press forward with a defamation suit against CNN.
“If they’re not true, he has the best lawsuit in the history of the country for libel,” Graham told NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
“If I were him, I would hire me the best lawyer I could find,” Graham added. “I’d sue the hell out of CNN.”
He noted that because of the high stakes involved for North Carolinians—and the prospect that it could impact the presidential race—Robinson “has an obligation to defend himself” because “this is hanging over his campaign.”
The Trump campaign, which has maintained a heavy presence in the state recently, with polls showing a razor-thin lead over Democrat nominee Kamala Harris, appeared to distance itself from Robinson at recent events in Raleigh and Wilmington, where the GOP candidates for Robinson’s current job as lieutenant governor—Hal Weatherman—and state attorney general—U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop—were invited to speak but the gubernatorial candidate was snubbed.
Despite the public recusals from Republican candidates and office-holders, however, many continued to express their support for Robinson on social media and elsewhere, noting what appeared to be a double-standard in his treatment versus that of other high-profile politicians who have made controversial statements—including Trump himself.
The situation seemed, in some ways, to parallel the 2016 “October surprise” in which Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton released a 2005 Access Hollywood recording of Trump making lewd comments that he later dismissed as “locker-room talk.”
But the issue proved to be a liability for Clinton as many noted her selective outrage over Trump’s boorish remarks while shrugging off the multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault that had been brought against her own husband and associates like Harvey Weinstein.
Some may likewise question whether Robinson’s alleged comments—which did not appear to be serious if they were, in fact, true—should disqualify him after his four years of demonstrated leadership, or whether they added precisely to the working-class, Everyman appeal that led voters to connect with him in the first place.
Supporters have pointed to the fact that Democrats—notably those on leftist news networks like CNN—have previously celebrated anti-Semitism, fetish culture and other issues related to the alleged posts that they are now imbuing with their performative outrage.
If Robinson does push through, however, and turn the scandal into a liability for Stein, Harris and other Democrats who have embarked on yet another “high-tech lynching,” as he said Thursday, invoking the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, it is essential that he continue to receive institutional support, as well as popular support.
Undoubtedly, Democrats will not let such an opportunity rest if they sense blood in the water and can leverage their own advantages—including the media and the federal government—to attack Robinson with everything they have.
In light of the recent lawfare attacks on Trump and others, including the arrest and incarceration of meme-creator Douglass Mackey over a 2016 post that told Democrats to text their votes for Hillary Clinton, it is not unfathomable to think that Attorney General Merrick Garland might seek to initiate a federal hate crime investigation against Robinson for his alleged posts.
While there is currently a seven-year statute of limitations against prosecution for any such federal crime not involving death, the New York case in which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg colluded with the Justice Department and Judge Juan Merchan to convict Trump shows that corrupt prosecutors applying an “ends justifies the means” philosophy to attain a particular political outcome are not above taking liberties with the rule of law.
But as with Trump, the DOJ’s targeting of Robinson for his alleged “hate crimes” could also backfire, turning him even more sympathetic and heroic by taking him back to his roots as a man with his back to the wall fighting against a system that is rigged in favor of the powerful and inaccessible to the common folk.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
