Is the GOP's Point Man for Recruiting Black Candidates Hiding a Fake Ph.D. and a Violent Past?

At first glance, Dr. Timothy F. Johnson appears to be everything the Republican Party -- and its allies in the religious right and the Tea Party movement -- would want in a point man for the recruitment of African-American candidates to the GOP ticket.

Tall, trim and good-looking, with a Ph.D., according to his bio, and a 21-year military career -- from which he retired as an officer, according to his resume -- Johnson presents himself as a committed Christian family man. He is a spokesman for his cause at events convened by the religious right, such as the recent Freedom Federation Awakening Summit that took place at Liberty University last month, and to the media. In recent months, Johnson has been quoted by the New York Times and the Associated Press, and has appeared on CNN.

But in the year since he won the vice-chairmanship of the North Carolina Republican Party -- the first African American to win such a high office in the NCGOP -- key elements of Johnson's personal story are being questioned.

A leading figure in efforts to build a movement of African-American conservative Christian Republicans, Johnson was elected to his GOP post by party delegates last year despite a felony domestic violence conviction, questions raised about his military service and the validity of the doctorate that appears on his resume. An investigation by AlterNet turned up records of a second domestic violence arrest and raised further questions about Johnson's military service.

Johnson's profile in the North Carolina Republican Party is due, in part, to his chairmanship of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, which bills itself as "a public policy and educational organization which brings the sanctity of free market and limited government ideas to bear on the hardest problems facing our nation." In his work at the foundation -- a post Johnson maintains in addition to his duties as vice-chair of the North Carolina GOP -- Johnson is working to elect the record 32 African-American Republicans running for House and Senate seats this year. The Frederick Douglass Foundation also claims, on its Web site, to serve as "a liaison to Black, Faith Based organizations," and has ties to the Family Research Council and the ministries of Wellington Boone. The foundation also sponsored viewings of the film Maafa 21, which claims that legal abortion amounts to genocide of African Americans.

A Fabricated Endorsement from a Battered Ex-Wife?

Just days before Johnson stood for election to his party office at the North Carolina Republican state convention in June 2009, a local television news station revealed that Johnson had pleaded guilty in 1996 to a felony domestic violence charge in Cleveland, Ohio, and served 18 months probation. Johnson reacted to that revelation by issuing a statement, infused with Biblical references, asserting he had put the incident behind him: "There seems to be an attempt to discredit me, bring shame to my family and to publicly promote a distorted view of a particularly disappointing time in my life."

Johnson also attached an endorsement letter from Ofelia Felix-Johnson, his former wife, whom he was convicted of assaulting. At the time of the assault, the two were still married. But this month, Mountain Xpress, an independent paper in Asheville, reported that Felix-Johnson contends that her ex-husband fabricated the letter.

"I absolutely did not say that," she told the paper. "This was not done with my consent, and I didn't even know about it. I didn't appreciate him putting my name out there when I had nothing to do with it."

Several attempts by AlterNet to reach Felix-Johnson, who now lives in Nebraska, were unsuccessful. Timothy Johnson told AlterNet he drafted the letter, but obtained Felix-Johnson's permission use her name with it.