CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A former employee of an Ohio Republican political consulting firm has been charged with threatening the firm's founder, one of the most well known Republican political consultants in the United States.

Gregg Phelps, 30, of Union County, has pleaded not guilty to a single charge of aggravated menacing, according to Delaware County Municipal Court records. Court records show he is barred from traveling within two miles of Strategy Group for Media, or the home of Rex Elsass, the firm's president and CEO.

A July 12 Delaware County Sheriff's Office incident report, obtained on Friday through a public records request, said a firm employee called 911 after Phelps, a former Strategy group media buyer, made a series of Facebook posts this week threatening Elsass and Strategy Group's current employees.

The charge is a first-degree misdemeanor, carrying a maximum $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail. Phelps spent Thursday night in jail after he turned himself in in response to an arrest warrant, a county sheriff's office spokeswoman said.

Phelps was upset over not being able to tap into a company incentive program for former employees, Ben Yoho, the company's president, told a Delaware County 911 dispatcher on Wednesday. Phelps, who now runs his own consulting firm, worked for several years for Strategy Group before he was terminated "three or four years ago," Yoho told the dispatcher.

"He's demanding his money, but he hasn't been gone long enough for us to pay him yet," Yoho said, according to an audio recording of the call. "So he's threatening to destroy us and tear down our reputation and all this other B.S. He said something like, he's gonna beat our ass if he doesn't have it wired this morning. And he just posted something on Facebook ... 'time to burn the m-----f----r to the ground.'"

In a series of vulgar Facebook posts, which were viewed by cleveland.com, Phelps ranted about:

"Many social media posts were made by this individual threatening the lives of our employees. We take the safety of our staff as our highest obligation, and turn this matter over to the authorities," Yoho said.

Elsass, 54, has rapidly built national profile (a GQ headline last year described him as the "secret wizard of the far-right") since founding Strategy Group, which operates out of a historic farmhouse in Suburban Columbus, in the early 1990s.

The firm's past clients are a who's-who of GOP politics. He advised President Donald Trump's campaign last year, and previously served as a strategist for Vice-President Mike Pence, a former Indiana governor and congressman. He's been a fixture in Ohio GOP politics for longer. His company has worked with or advised most of Ohio's prominent Republican officials, including Gov. John Kasich, and he's a former executive director of the Ohio Republican Party.

Phelps is not the first ex-Strategy Group employee to run into legal trouble after an acrimonious departure from the firm. Nick Everhart, a former Strategy Group president who Elsass had initially hired as an assistant, in 2015 was convicted of a felony after prosecutors said he illegally accessed a company computer after he was fired. Everhart and Elsass had a falling out, which played out publicly in BuzzFeed and other political media outlets, over disagreements with Elsass' management of the company.