Indian Trail Town Council members hear the results of an external investigation into Councilman Todd Barber’s connection to a controversial Facebook page.
The Charlotte Observer
An outside investigation tied a Union County elected official to a controversial social media account accused of spreading lies. Now, the Indian Trail Town Council will hold a hearing on whether to formally censure the council member.
The situation stems from the Indian Trail Weasel Report account, formerly the campaign Facebook page for Council member Todd Barber. Some leaders in the Union County town of about 42,800, located 30 minutes southeast of Charlotte, say it’s the source of false information spread with Barber’s help, The Charlotte Observer reported previously.
Barber said previously he hasn’t been involved with the page in months and accused others on the council of acting “immature” and levying personal attacks.
But an outside investigation into Barber’s behavior, conducted by an attorney with the Parker Poe law firm, said Barber’s actions to distance himself from the page are “surface level” and concluded he “has a degree of responsibility for content creation on The Weasel.” It also calls Barber’s wife’s involvement with the page a potential conflict of interest.
Barber was first elected to the council in 2019 and in his second four-year term.
After the report was presented at their Tuesday meeting, town council members voted unanimously to hold a hearing on whether to censure Barber in May.
Indian Trail Town Council
Indian Trail Mayor Pro Tem Dennis Gay previously accused Barber of working with others to use the Weasel Report page as a “propaganda machine” to spread false information about council business, sharing rumors about other leaders and leaking information shared in closed council sessions.
“It’s just been one big, huge mess,” Gay said in January.
Gay, along with Mayor David Cohn, are frequent targets of posts on the Weasel Report account. A March 30 post calls Gay a “creep” for “messaging people that liked posts made by friends of Todd Barber and his wife.” Gay told the Observer he messages people on social media who interact with posts on the Weasel Report to “respond to his false claims” because he’s blocked from commenting on the page.
Former council member Marcus McIntyre, who served from 2018 to 2023, previously said Barber’s behavior was “a primary reason” he didn’t run for reelection.
Barber confirmed to the Observer in January the Weasel Report page was once his campaign’s Facebook account. But he said there were always multiple administrators and managers who could post to the account, and he gave up all access to the page in September.
Both sides expressed concern the tensions could cause an exodus of town staff.
Investigation: Barber’s actions ‘undermine public confidence and trust’
The external investigation presented Tuesday said the Weasel Report “has an inescapable digital link to Councilman Barber” because some of the account’s followers started following the page when it was his campaign account.
“One must also query that if the intent of The Weasel is to be wholly independent of any affiliation with Councilman Barber why, then, The Weasel was not simply created as a new Facebook page on August 24, 2024, starting with no Elect Todd Barber followers, no Elect Todd Barber prior posts, and no Elect Todd Barber references at all,” the report says. “That is not what happened.”
Barber also used the page’s weasel “mascot” in posts before the name change and “has attended several public functions” with the animal, the report says. According to the report, Barber’s acknowledgment that his wife still posts on the page is a potential conflict of interest.
The report says parsing whether Barber is the “technical author” of recent posts “is a red herring” that creates an “unreasonable burden of proof” for the town.
It concludes Barber’s “surface-level actions to distance himself from The Weasel tend to mislead the public” and that his actions “undermine public confidence and trust in local government” in violation of Indian Trail’s code of ethics.
The report also criticizes its own existence.
“The fact that the town has to take time and resources to analyze whether a cartoonish social media page using a council member’s pet weasel as a ‘reporter’ putatively authored by said council member’s partner violates an ethics policy is dispiriting,” it says.
Indian Trail Town Council sets censure hearing
Barber asked for a hearing to present a rebuttal after Tuesday’s presentation of the report to the full council.
“I have a right to answer,” he said.
Barber initially requested the hearing not be held for at least four months, saying he deserved the same amount of time to put together his defense and consider hiring his own attorney as the outside lawyer who conducted the investigation.
“I think that’s fair,” he said.
But others pushed back on that timeline, saying it’s in the best interest of the town to act quickly.
“Let’s get this thing over with,” Cohn said.
The hearing was ultimately scheduled for May 13 by a unanimous vote, including a provision that the council consider censuring Barber at the hearing.
It’s not the first time Barber has faced a censure. The council rebuked him in 2023 over claims he misrepresented town staff’s comments about the future of churches in Indian Trail’s downtown amid potential redevelopment.
This article was originally published by a www.charlotteobserver.com . Read the Original article here. .