The top staffer to Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s embattled lieutenant governor, is set to resign following a CNN KFile report that Robinson made inflammatory and racist remarks on a pornography website’s message board. Brian LiVecchi, Robinson’s chief of staff and general counsel, will resign in the coming week, according to a source familiar with the matter. His departure is the latest in a series of high-profile resignations of Robinson staffers in the wake of CNN’s report last week. Robinson, who is the Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina, already lost most of his campaign staff when they resigned on Sunday, including his campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, finance director, and senior advisor and general consultant. The New York Times and WRAL reported on Wednesday that Robinson’s policy director, communications director, and director of government affairs had also resigned. CNN reached out to those staff members but has not heard back.

Robinson announced a new chief of staff on X on Thursday morning, saying he had elevated Krishana Polite, his deputy chief of staff, to the top position. Robinson’s lewd comments included describing himself as a “black Nazi,” describing how he used to go “peeping” on women at a public gym when he was 14 years old and expressing support for reinstating slavery on the pornographic website Nude Africa. Robinson listed his full name on his profile for Nude Africa, as well as an email address he used on numerous websites across the internet for decades.

In an interview with CNN on last week, Robinson repeatedly denied that he made the comments on Nude Africa. “This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not anything that is characteristic of me,” Robinson said. Presented with the litany of evidence connecting him with the user name on Nude Africa, Robinson said, “I’m not going to get into the minutia of how somebody manufactured this, these salacious tabloid lies.”

Robinson’s troubles come at a crucial time for the Republican Party in North Carolina. The state is considered a battleground in the 2024 presidential election, and the GOP is hoping to hold onto the governor’s mansion. Robinson’s candidacy has been a source of concern for some Republicans, who have worried that his controversial views could hurt the party’s chances in the state. Robinson has vehemently denied the allegations, calling them “false smears.” He has also said that he is confident that he will win the election. However, the scandal has already taken a toll on his campaign, and it remains to be seen whether he will be able to recover. The Republican Governors Association has cut off support for Robinson, with no new ad placements. Stein’s campaign and his allies have outraised Robinson and his supporting groups, running commercials and posting videos criticizing Robinson for his past inflammatory comments on abortion, LGBTQ+ issues and the role of women. Other state Republicans have said that unless Robinson produces evidence soon to refute the allegations in the CNN report the GOP must turn its focus to other critical races in the battleground state.

Robinson said in a post on X that he spoke with Republican leaders across the state Wednesday morning “and made it clear: This is an election about policies, not personalities ... From President Trump to our local community officials, we must vote Republican.”

Robinson was already trailing his Democratic rival, Josh Stein, a Harvard-educated, two-term attorney general who would be North Carolina’s first Jewish governor, before the CNN report came out. Leading Republicans, bracing for the story, had reportedly tried to nudge Robinson out of the race, but a spokesman denied it, and Robinson vowed to persevere against what he called “salacious tabloid lies.” He said that the posts “are not the words of Mark Robinson,” and went on, “Clarence Thomas famously once said he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is, too.” Yet, by Sunday night, most of his campaign staff had quit, leaving him, according to one account, with just two communications aides and a bodyguard. On Monday, the Republican Governors Association announced that it had no plans to spend more money trying to get him elected. Thom Tillis, one of the state’s two Republican senators, put it another way, on X: “We must stay focused on the races we can win.”

The Republican Governors Association has cut off support for Robinson, with no new ad placements. Stein’s campaign and his allies have outraised Robinson and his supporting groups, running commercials and posting videos criticizing Robinson for his past inflammatory comments on abortion, LGBTQ+ issues and the role of women. Other state Republicans have said that unless Robinson produces evidence soon to refute the allegations in the CNN report the GOP must turn its focus to other critical races in the battleground state.

Robinson said in a post on X that he spoke with Republican leaders across the state Wednesday morning “and made it clear: This is an election about policies, not personalities ... From President Trump to our local community officials, we must vote Republican.”

The Lieutenant Governor’s Office is small — the office website identifies eight employees — and Robinson’s duties are few. They include presiding over the state Senate and serving on the State Board of Elections. His office also handles constituent services. Robinson tackled other issues, such as boosting work apprenticeships and opposing what he considered political indoctrination in the public schools. The lieutenant governor’s four-year term, like the governor’s, concludes at year’s end. Robinson’s political views were clear to anyone who chose to look for them. Yet plenty of Republicans either cheered or looked the other way. Robinson declared his interest in running for governor just months after he took office. In 2023, when he made it official, he immediately became the front-runner for the Republican nomination to succeed Cooper. Robinson collected Trump’s endorsement and swamped a pair of more mainstream opponents, including the state treasurer, in the March primary, winning nearly sixty-five per cent of the vote. Invited to speak at the Republican National Convention, he called Trump “the Braveheart of our time.” Along the way, his views on more subjects emerged, including his declaration that the evidence of climate change is “junk science” and that college professors who warn of its consequences are “liars.” He characterized the civil-rights movement as a communist plot to “subvert capitalism” and said that abortion “is about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”

The CNN story, by Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, traced posts on Nude Africa to Robinson, matching online identities, e-mail addresses, biographical details, and idiosyncratic phrases, such as “gag a maggot” and “I don’t give a frogs fat ass.” He said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography and referred to himself as a “perv.” Martin Luther King, Jr., he said, was a “huckster” who did not deserve a memorial on the National Mall. Yet Trump has not withdrawn his endorsement of Robinson. Nor has the North Carolina Republican Party dropped him. In a statement released last week, the Party blamed “the Left” for demonizing Robinson, who still denies the CNN reports.

Former President Trump said he did not know the “situation” regarding North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate under pressure for controversial posts. Trump was asked on Thursday if he plans to rescind his endorsement of Robinson after a CNN KFile report unearthed a decade’s worth of inflammatory, racist, and sexually explicit posts from online accounts linked to Robinson, including one where the poster identified themselves as a “black NAZI!” The former president responded to the question by saying “I don’t know the situation” before moving on to answer another question. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast. Robinson has vehemently denied the reporting, calling the comments “salacious tabloid lies.” In the days since the report was released, Robinson has seen both campaign staff and office staff resign.

Robinson’s troubles come at a crucial time for the Republican Party in North Carolina. The state is considered a battleground in the 2024 presidential election, and the GOP is hoping to hold onto the governor’s mansion. Robinson’s candidacy has been a source of concern for some Republicans, who have worried that his controversial views could hurt the party’s chances in the state. Robinson has vehemently denied the allegations, calling them “false smears.” He has also said that he is confident that he will win the election. However, the scandal has already taken a toll on his campaign, and it remains to be seen whether he will be able to recover.

The Harris campaign, who are eager to tie the former president to the besieged lieutenant governor in an important swing state, quickly responded to the remark. “It’s impossible to believe that, somehow, Donald Trump missed the news about his handpicked candidate for governor calling himself a ‘Nazi,’” Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement sent to the Daily Beast. “Trump has been to North Carolina twice since the news broke and is still standing by Robinson, even as the people who know Robinson best are abandoning him,” Moussa said.

At a rally in Charlotte on Monday, responding to reporters’ questions, J. D. Vance dismissed the whole episode as a long-ago “sex scandal,” making no mention of Robinson’s history of provocative remarks, nor offering his opinion on Robinson’s denial. He criticized the news media as his supporters booed the repeated questions, and said that it is up to Robinson to argue his case to North Carolina voters. “They get to be the judges of whether they believe him or not. It’s really that simple.”

The effects of Robinson’s troubles on Trump’s chances remain unclear, Christopher Cooper told me. “I don’t think there’s anyone in North Carolina who has five MAGA hats in their closet and, all of a sudden, they’re turning them in for a camo ‘Harris Walz’ hat.” He noted that voters in the state have a history of ticket-splitting and pointed out that even before the CNN report, as many as one in ten Trump supporters said that they would vote for Stein. “The best possible scenario for the Republicans,” Cooper said, “is if that number increases—people put Robinson in his own box and continue right down the ballot as if it didn’t happen. Because Robinson is not going to win.” ♦