NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson pays $35,000 after investigation finds campaign violations
.JPG "North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson makes a concession speech during an election watch party at the City Club in Raleigh after losing the race to Democratic nominee Attorney General Josh Stein on Nov. 5, 2024.")
North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign has agreed to pay over $35,000 for campaign finance violations, according to a settlement it reached with the State Board of Elections.
The settlement arises from a nearly four-year investigation of Robinson’s 2020 campaign for lieutenant governor, which found that he accepted contributions from prohibited donors, took donations over the maximum limit and used campaign money for personal expenses.
“The investigation documented the Robinson team’s magnificent disregard for obeying the law and flagrant mismanagement of campaign finances,” Bob Hall, a longtime campaign finance watchdog who submitted the initial complaint against Robinson, said in a statement.
Matt Hurley, a spokesperson for Robinson, told The News & Observer that the settlement was “based on a years long dispute over some filing errors inadvertently made by a treasurer who has not been with the campaign in many many years.”
The State Board of Elections completed an audit of Robinson’s campaign finance violations this September, but a law passed in 2018 by the Republican-controlled General Assembly prevented the agency from releasing it until the investigation was finished.
Recent News & Observer reporting for its investigative series Power & Secrecy described the impact that law has had on what the State Board of Elections discloses about campaign donation complaints and investigations.
This month, the board, which has a 3-2 Democratic majority, reached a settlement with the campaign in which it agreed to pay $35,065.52 for “prohibited transactions” from July 1, 2019 to Dec. 31, 2020.
As part of the agreement, the board will not force Robinson’s campaign to pay the cost of its investigation.
A spokesperson for the board confirmed that Robinson’s campaign paid the settlement amount on Dec. 10.
The news comes over a month after Robinson lost his bid for governor following a bombshell CNN report that tied him to a series of racist, sexually graphic online comments.
Robinson sued CNN for defamation, but the case has yet to reach a hearing.
That lawsuit isn’t the only legal dispute the campaign remains embroiled in.
In October, a polling company sued Robinson for $114,000 over a bill it claims was never paid. A spokesperson for his campaign called the lawsuit “completely baseless.”
What campaign finance violations did the state find?
The state board’s audit of Robinson’s campaign finances found a variety of prohibited contributions and reporting errors during his 2020 run for lieutenant governor.
According to the audit report, the campaign accepted three donations over the contribution maximum, totaling $11,800 over the limit.
The campaign also took over $12,000 in donations from five political committees which were not permitted to operate in North Carolina. Most of those were national committees, including Gun Owners of America, which had not registered with the State Board of Elections.
The board’s investigation also analyzed 181 expenditures made by Robinson’s campaign, several of which did not include a description of their purpose.
Investigators found that over $200 of campaign money was spent on personal medical expenses which were considered “prohibited uses of committee funds.”
The campaign also spent $4,500 to reimburse Robinson’s wife for the purchase of 310 campaign T-shirts, though this was a permitted transaction.
The investigation found a variety of accounting errors across all reports, including 33 contributions totaling $38,850 that were not properly reported.
The audit found that this was due to “the inexperience of the former treasurer in how donors needed to be set up in the third-party software system” and recommended that the campaign amend its reports to correct these errors.
However, as part of the settlement agreement, Robinson’s campaign will not have to file any amended reports.
Hall said the penalties to the campaign should have been harsher, including making it pay for the cost of the investigation.
He also criticized the length of the investigation, saying the board took “an enormous amount of time for a very high-level political figure where I would think that the public’s interest in what’s going on with that investigation should have prompted them to speed it up.”
However, Hall laid some of the blame with the General Assembly for underfunding the board’s investigative unit and making investigations confidential.
“That’s been a real setback for the public’s ability to hold private money accountable,” he said.
This story was originally published December 18, 2024 at 10:07 AM.
