Top Republican leaders in North Carolina have called on Mark Robinson to provide proof that he wasn’t behind salacious posts on a pornography website — but new information continues to point to his involvement in the type of online sexual activity he denies.
User data reviewed by POLITICO shows that the person using the “Nude Africa” account that reportedly belonged to Robinson had accessed the porn website from a location not far from Robinson’s home. Robinson’s email address is also registered with other previously unreported dating websites, POLITICO found.
Robinson, whose top campaign advisers and nearly all his staff resigned on Sunday, continues to deny a CNN report that he called himself a “black NAZI,” admitted to enjoying watching transgender pornography and made graphic comments about other sexual preferences more than a decade ago on Nude Africa. He also denied a report by POLITICO that he had an account on Ashley Madison, a website for married people seeking affairs.
A new POLITICO review of account data associated with Robinson’s email address from multiple websites that had been previously hacked — and the websites’ breached user data posted on the dark web in recent years — shows that the IP address listed with Robinson’s Nude Africa account is located in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina where he lived.
Files from the various data breaches that captured Robinson’s user information were shared with POLITICO by Megan Squire, a computer scientist and deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy group that has not taken a position on the North Carolina governor’s race but has monitored Robinson’s “extremism and hateful statements as Lieutenant Governor and in his prior life as an influencer,” Squire said.
Robinson’s account on the pornographic online forum, which was part of a 2018 data breach by Nude Africa’s parent website “Wife Lovers,” was registered with an IP address corresponding to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a city near Robinson’s home of Greensboro and part of the same tri-city region.
The same IP address was also listed in breached user data for an account registered to Robinson’s email address on the dating website Fling, POLITICO found. Leaked database files from other website breaches show that Robinson’s email address was registered on the dating websites Adult Friend Finder and Mate 1, and the now-defunct website Lords Of Porno. There is no evidence that Robinson was recently active on any of these websites. The leaked data from Adult Friend Finder listed his last visit as December 31, 2013.
“The things that people can do with the internet now is incredible,” Robinson told CNN last week, denying the posts were his after being presented with evidence linking the account to him.
The breached data also revealed that the password that Robinson’s email address used to register with Nude Africa was nearly identical to a password used by three separate accounts registered under his wife’s email address on non-pornographic websites, including DatPiff, a now-retired hip-hop mixtape website. The passwords used the same obscure phrase.
Mike Lonergan, Robinson’s spokesperson, repeated the campaign’s denials that the lieutenant governor “ever created or used an account on any of these websites” and stated that they’re hiring lawyers to investigate the matter.
Robinson, who had previously admitted to other past issues that came to light through news stories — such as mismanaging his finances and taking his wife to get an abortion decades ago — has stayed firm in denying the latest revelations.
That prompted top North Carolina Republicans, including Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, to call for Robinson to show evidence of libel, beyond just claiming the stories are smears.
“If the reporting on Mark Robinson is a total media fabrication, he needs to take immediate legal action,” Tillis wrote on Friday.
And North Carolina Republican Party chair Jason Simmons told POLITICO in a statement that the accusations Robinson is facing “are deeply troubling,” adding that “he needs to explain them to the people of North Carolina.”
Robinson has not filed any lawsuits related to the allegations about his online activity. During a campaign stop Monday, Robinson said he is considering “everything up to legal counsel to take CNN to task for what they have done to us,” WRAL reported. The Raleigh-based TV station also reported that Robinson had rejected offers from supporters to connect him with information technology experts who would help him investigate the posts.