NewsChannel 5 honored with coveted Peabody Award for Gabrielle Hanson investigation. It is an honor well-deserved.

Gabrielle Handson

 by Rod Williams, May 10, 2024- In the era of Trump, we are seeing more and more Republican, or "conservative" candidates run for office who are charlatans, hypocrites, con-artist, conspiracy theorist, and fellow travelers with white supremist run for office. In the city of Franklin Tennessee, one who fit that mold was Gabrielle Handson, who ran for mayor challenging incumbent Ken Moore.

This campaign was so bizarre that if it was a work of fiction, it would have been dismissed as unbelievable. Thankfully Ken Moore won in a landslide. It not for the reporting of NewsChannel 5, that might not have been the case. In a series of more than 20 reports, Phil Williams exposed Handson for what she was. NewsChannel 5 has been honored for this reporting, an award well deserved. 

Below is a summary of some of the reporting that exposed Handson: 

• Gabrielle Hanson lifted social media images of a diverse group of people to falsely claim on social media that those images reflected support for her campaign. Using AI search tools, Williams tracked down some of the women in one of the photos, who said that they did not know Hanson and did not support her race for mayor. 
• Hanson, who was running for mayor on a pro-morality campaign, had been arrested and convicted for promoting prostitution in Dallas in the mid-90s. As NewsChannel 5 prepared to air its report, Hanson released a video claiming that she had been an unwitting call taker in a high-end prostitution ring. Those claims were put into doubt by evidence that she had been known in Dallas under an alias (Julie Newhouse/Neuhaus).
• During a subsequent court proceeding, the candidate for mayor denied under oath that she had ever used an alias, but NewsChannel 5 uncovered documents from Florida that directly linked her to an application to operate in a fictitious business name, J. Neuhaus and Associates.
• While Gabrielle Hanson told voters that she and her husband lived in Franklin, Tennessee, NewsChannel 5 discovered that, in Chicago, they had also claimed to live there as Tommy Hanson repeatedly ran for Congress.
• Despite Hanson’s vigorous efforts to block Pride events in Franklin, NewsChannel 5 uncovered a photo of Tommy Hanson wearing nothing but an American flag Speedo at a Pride parade in Chicago as he campaigned for Congress. A newspaper story at the time quoted him as saying he participated in the event at the encouragement of his wife.
• Gabrielle Hanson had claimed to have warned a local police officer about a premonition before Nashville’s deadly Covenant School shooting. But Williams obtained the officer’s bodycam video, which proved that her bizarre claims were false.
• When a group of suspicious characters showed up at a candidates forum allegedly to provide security for Hanson, Williams approached them and quickly identified them as white supremacists and “literal Nazis.” Williams immediately confronted Hanson about her ties to the hate group.
• Williams directly connected Hanson’s campaign to efforts by the white supremacists and neo-Nazis to intimidate local residents who opposed the controversial candidate.
• Video from a tent revival in a local parklinked Hanson to the Christian nationalist movement now sweeping parts of the country.
• One of Hanson’s allies, Jeff Feldman, claimed an impressive professional biography that fell apart under questioning by Williams.
• Jeff Feldman initially denied making controversial social media posts threatening to use guns on local teens, but he inadvertently admitted while being interviewed that the posts were indeed his.

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