Details emerge in Johnston County school board member’s extortion, sex scandal case

New details in the extortion case against Johnston County school board member Ronald Johnson allege he met Congressional candidate DeVan Barbour in a pickup behind a Clayton gym and threatened to expose a recording of an “incident” involving Barbour and a teacher.

In exchange for silence, Johnson wanted Barbour to compel the same woman involved in the incident to sign a statement saying she had lied about an affair she had with Johnson, according to court documents.

“Mr. Barbour told Mr. Johnson that this sounded a lot like blackmail and the two engaged in a heated conversation,” wrote an investigator with the Johnston County district attorney’s office. “Mr. Barbour then asked Mr. Johnson, ‘How do I know you’re the only one with a copy?’ ... The conversation became heated, and Mr. Barbour chose to de-escalate it because ‘he didn’t trust his head space.’”

Johnson, a Republican on the school board and former Smithfield police detective, is under indictment for extortion, felony obstruction of justice and willfully failing to discharge his duties. The new details appear in the investigator’s application for a warrant to search Johnson’s Clayton home, his Dodge Challenger and his personal possessions.

Johnson’s attorney, Walter Schmidlin, declined to comment on the case Wednesday. Johnson continues to serve on the board, participating in meetings as recently as Tuesday.

Johnson censured twice

Elected in 2016 while still a Smithfield police officer, Johnson was censured by the school board twice last year, drawing ire for secretly recording conversations during closed-session meetings and also for sending texts commenting on the physical appearance of female employees.

In June of 2022, Johnson filed a protective order against Angela McLeod, a Johnston County teacher, seeking to stop unsolicited text messages and phone calls, court records said.

When the investigator then interviewed the teacher, Angela Barbour, she said that McLeod is her maiden name. She described having a sexual relationship with Johnson almost two years ago, including trips to hotels in Charlotte and Virginia.

Angela Barbour also told the investigator that Johnson had previously asked her to record other people “for leverage or to give him an advantage” in the future.

She also told the investigator that in October of 2021, she communicated with DeVan Barbour via Snapchat and Facetime, describing him as partially clothed and intoxicated, according to the warrant application. The state Attorney General’s Office, which is prosecuting the case, said that DeVan Barbour and Angela Barbour are not related.

Johnson, in turn, asked Angela Barbour to record DeVan Barbour or have sex with him, giving her a prepaid phone to use, court records said.

In a message Thursday, Angela Barbour told The N&O, “Unfortunately I cannot comment at this time. Thank you.”

‘Mind games’

During a September school board meeting, she accused Johnson, Donovan and new school board member Michelle Antoine of playing “mind games.”

“He fooled me, too,” she said of Johnson in that meeting.

DeVan Barbour unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the 13th Congressional District last year, finishing second to Bo Hines. In his YouTube campaign advertisement, he described himself as “seven-time dad of the year” and “pro-family.”

Reached Wednesday, he declined to comment.

The investigator described finding multiple non-work-related recordings on Johnson’s Smithfield police computer, including those of past Johnston County school superintendents and board members.

Another of those recordings contained Angela Barbour telling school board candidate Kevin Donovan that DeVan Barbour had been making advances, court records said. Donovan was elected to the Johnston school board in November.

Angela Barbour then showed the investigator her own recording of another conversation with Donovan, who demanded that she present proof of her affair with Johnson.

“Ronald Johnson is supporting me,” Donovan, then a candidate, said in the recording, according to court records. “If this goes public, it will be all over Facebook. I won’t be able to get on the board. I will look like (expletive).”

Speaking to the investigator, Donovan denied making the recording or sharing any information with Johnson. He did say he told DeVan Barbour that Angela Barbour was describing sex with him.

“He shared this information with Mr. Barbour because he was running for Congress,” the investigator wrote.

Donovan referred questions to his attorney, Steven Walker, who said through an assistant Thursday that he had not yet seen the search warrant documents.

Johnson’s ‘strong rhetoric’

The investigator later contacted DeVan Barbour, who said he’d been told about the recording by both Donovan and Johnson. He added that he knew Johnson from political events and considered using his name in mailings, but reconsidered due to Johnson’s “strong rhetoric” including the acronym “FAFO.”

“FAFO” is an expression sometimes associated with the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group.

In May, shortly before the 2022 Republican primary, Johnson called DeVan Barbour asking to share information at an urgent meeting. They parked after midnight behind Clayton Fitness, where Johnson got into Barbour’s pickup holding several phones.

“Ronald Johnson didn’t say a word,” the investigator wrote. “Instead of speaking, Mr. Johnson handed Mr. Barbour the ear buds and played a recording from the phone. The recording was Ronald Johnson’s voice. Mr. Johnson described an incident between DeVan Barbour and Angela Barbour. The recording stated Mr. Johnson was in possession of a recording of this incident.

“To prevent the release of this recording,” court records continued, “DeVan Barbour was to contact Angela Barbour and have her write a statement saying she lied about having an affair with Ronald Johnson.”

‘A direct threat to his candidacy’

After he “de-escalated,” Devan Barbour told the investigator he considered the matter finished. But later in May, court records said, he received a text message from a number with an out-out-state area code saying the recording was about to be released.

“Mr. Barbour stated he considered Mr. Johnson’s actions to constitute a direct threat to his candidacy for Congress because a recording like that in the middle of a federal campaign would be harmful,” according to the search warrant application.

Johnson also started a subscriber account with Pinger, a communications app, and demonstrated that he was “intensely preoccupied” with any disclosure of his past sexual relationship with Angela Barbour becoming public, the investigator wrote.

Through Pinger, court records said, Johnson exchanged more than 30,000 messages with a different Johnston County teacher and friend of Angela Barbour, including nude photos of the other teacher.

After DeVan Barbour’s loss in the primary, the investigator wrote, all communication with Johnson stopped.

The investigator later went to Clayton Fitness, the site of Johnson’s late-night meeting with DeVan Barbour, to ask about video surveillance recordings. He learned that Johnson had rented an office inside the gym for after-hours work.

While the investigator left to get a search warrant, he asked Clayton police to stand watch, court records said.

Johnson arrived at the gym less than an hour later and then left carrying a large white box, the investigator wrote.

After searching the car, the investigator found the white box empty, along with five memory drives and three phones, one of which was concealed inside a Faraday bag designed to keep it from connecting with cellular towers.

Read the warrant

Read the document here. Personal information, such as phone numbers, email addresses and home addresses, have been redacted.

Staff writer T. Keung Hui contributed to this report.