'In trouble with the Girl Scouts?' Report reveals Mark Robinson wife's many money scandals
The North Carolina Republican candidate linked to pro-Nazi and slavery comments made on a porn site is married to a woman successfully sued by an organization that helps little girls sell cookies, a new report shows.
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's wife Yolanda, 56, has faced court battles over questionable bookkeeping practices — one of which officials say cost the state of North Carolina more than $130,000 — and a bounced check sent to a local Girl Scouts group, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
“The Girl Scouts," said Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper. "How do you get in trouble with the Girl Scouts?”
Neither Robinson’s campaign nor his wife opted to provide the Times with a comment.
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Financial scandals detailed by the Times include a summons to small claims court by the Girl Scouts Tarheel Triad Council in 2003, a career of running nonprofits that have earned Yolanda Robinson unprecedented notoriety in the state, and an eviction.
Cooper called Yolanda Robinson's reputation among North Carolina voters "unusual" and added, “It tells us that she has been ensnared in almost as much controversy as her husband.”
One of those controversies includes the shuttering this year of Yolanda Robinson's nonprofit Balanced Nutrition, which helps child care centers obtain federal funding for low-cost meals, according to the report.
An investigation found Balanced Nutrition had improperly billed the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services $132,000 for a child-care center that had not requested funding, let alone received it, according to the Times.
The agency also reported “serious deficiencies” that included paying Yolanda Robinson's daughter without state approval or disclosure of the relationship, the Times reported.
"Robinson abruptly closed the nonprofit in the spring," the report states, "citing the time commitment of her husband’s campaign."
Yolanda Robinson earlier in her career sold a day care center, which she owned and her husband helped operate, when a state investigation found it had presented falsified documents to inspectors, the Times reported.
These efforts have earned Yolanda Robinson a particular reputation, Brant Clifton, the editor of The Daily Haymaker, told the New York Times.
“He’s the brawn,” Clifton said. "She’s the brains.”
A former landlord of the couple also told the Times the Robinsons, early in their marriage, had been evicted for not paying rent.
“His attitude was not a matter of ‘I can’t pay,’" Kermit Robinson told the Times. "It was a matter of ‘I don’t have to pay.'"