EVANSVILLE – Former Evansville mayoral candidate “Honest Gabe” Whitley was sentenced to three months in prison this week after pleading guilty to making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, court records show.
The charge stemmed from fake contributions Whitley claimed on various campaign finance reports between 2023 and 2024 during his failed run in the Republican primary for Indiana’s 7th District congressional seat.
According to the initial complaint filed in U.S. District Court in January, Whitley made up the biographical details of dozens of people and claimed over $200,000 in false contributions on quarterly and year-end reports for “Honest Gabe for Congress.”
Whitley also falsely claimed to loan his own campaign $100,000, the complaint says. All the while he acted as his own treasurer and certified in official records that the contributions and reports were “true, correct and complete” to the best of his knowledge.
On Tuesday, District Court Judge James R. Sweeney sentenced Whitley to three months of incarceration in the custody of U.S. Bureau of Prisons, as well as a year of supervised release afterward, court records show.
The judgement recommends Whitley “serve his term of imprisonment at the lowest security level deemed appropriate” and undergo a mental health evaluation. As of Friday, Whitley wasn’t listed in the Bureau of Prison’s database.
Calling himself “Honest Gabe,” Whitley inserted himself into Evansville right-wing politics starting in 2018. In quick succession, he declared his candidacies for everything from Vanderburgh County Commissioner to the Indiana Statehouse to Evansville mayor, usually dropping out before any vote took place. His mayoral bid, for instance, launched in 2022 and ended several months before the 2023 Republican primary.
The sentencing comes more than two years after an investigation by the Courier & Press’ Tom Langhorne found that multiple people listed on different Whitley campaign finance reports claimed to have never heard of him.
Whitley denied falsifying the reports at the time. He went on to file a lawsuit against Langhorne, the Courier & Press and USA Today in federal court. He sought $15 million in damages. A judge quickly dismissed the case.
As a plaintiff, Whitley has also filed federal complaints against the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice, and Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears, among others. According to court records, those were all dismissed.
And those are just a few of the multitude of court cases involving Whitley in recent years.
In November, a Marion County Superior Court Judge ordered him to pay $400,000 to Indianapolis attorney and journalist Abdul-Hakim Shabazz after blog and X posts reportedly authored by Whitley accused Shabazz of pedophilia and theft. Shabazz has never been charged with any such crime and he vehemently denied the accusations.
The two are also embroiled in criminal court. In August, the Marion County Prosecutor’s office charged Whitley with a Level 6 felony count of intimidation after he allegedly threatened Shabazz on social media. A jury trial is scheduled for July, court records show.
In 2022, he sparked yet another defamation case, this time in Vanderburgh Superior Court, when radio host Rob Kendall sued Whitley, the since-deleted Facebook group “Young Conservatives of Southern Indiana” and Whitley’s supposed associate Spencer McDaniel after they reportedly calling him a pedophile online. Like Shabazz, Kendall has never been charged with any such crime and forcefully denied the accusations.
Judge Mary Margaret Lloyd eventually dismissed Whitley as a defendant after “McDaniel” hopped on his personal Facebook page and took responsibility for the posts.
But a Courier & Press investigation last year could find no evidence McDaniel exists. Shabazz, who represented Kendall in the suit, said he believed Spencer was Gabe’s “fictional alter ego.” When a reporter asked Whitley about it, he offered this explanation: “all I can say is for Abdul and Rob is ‘prove it!’”
Kendall and Shabazz filed a motion to dismiss the case last year after no one was able to locate McDaniel. Lloyd granted it.
“The plaintiff does request that this court take note of the report he has provided showing that former Defendant Gabriel Whitley and Spencer McDaniel were alleged to be the same individual who wrote the defamatory remarks against him,” Shabazz wrote in the motion.
Whitley moved to Indianapolis in 2023. He eventually launched his “Honest Gabe for Congress” campaign and made it as far as Election Day in the Republican primary for the 7th District congressional seat. He lost.
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