SMITHFIELD, North Carolina — A member of a local school board in central North Carolina was sent to prison after being found guilty of extortion and other crimes, some of which were connected to trying to blackmail a candidate for Congress.
They found Ronald Lee Johnson Jr. guilty of four counts on Friday, when the hearing was over. Court records show that Johnson was given a prison sentence of 6 to 17 months by Superior Court Judge Joseph Crosswhite for a felony obstruction charge. Probation was part of his sentence for a criminal count of extortion and two counts of willfully failing to do his job.
The News & Observer of Raleigh reported that Crosswhite also told Johnson, 41, to be kicked off the Johnston County school board. Johnson was once seen as a rising star among Republicans, but he barely won re-election in November.
The court also took away Johnson’s license to be a police officer. The newspaper said that Johnson used to work as a police officer in Smithfield but was fired in late 2022 for “detrimental personal conduct.”
A special state prosecutor named Boz Zellinger led the case and told Crosswhite that Johnson “left a wake of destruction behind him” and that he should be sent to jail right away.
According to the charges, Johnson threatened to share a compromising audio recording of DeVan Barbour if Barbour didn’t get a woman they both knew to lie and say she wasn’t having an affair with Johnson in 2022.
Barbour, a failed Republican candidate in 2022 and 2024, told the jury that he was worried about the recording getting out all the way up to the 2022 GOP primary and that he called the woman several times to ask her to deny having an affair with Johnson.
Johnson said Thursday that he did not ask Barbour to get a statement from the woman. Instead, he said that he told Barbour about the recording to get help.
Amos Tyndall, Johnson’s lawyer, said, “He didn’t put out any recordings or public statements about Mr. Barbour.”
The charge of obstruction of justice comes from claims that Johnson took possible evidence out of his gym office after the probe had already started.
The convictions for failing to perform tasks are related to secret recordings of school board meetings that were not open to the public and claims that Johnson tried to get the children of a former friend moved to a different school as revenge against them. A while back, Johnson got in trouble with the school board for recording private meetings and trying to move students.
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