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Todd and Julie Chrisley pardon: Reality TV stars released from prison, daughter addresses Trump order | Video
Reality TV star Todd Chrisley was released from Federal Prison Camp Pensacola on Wednesday evening
Update: Julie Chrisley was also released from prison, soon after her husband Todd was freed, TMZ reported, citing sources.
Reality TV star Todd Chrisley was released from Federal Prison Camp Pensacola on Wednesday evening, CNN and TMZ reported, citing sources. This comes after President Donald Trump pardoned him and his wife, Julie Chrisley, who is serving her sentence in Lexington, Kentucky. It is unclear when she will be freed.
Their daughter, Savannah, spoke at a press conference before Todd Chrisley was let go. The reality TV star was convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion charges in 2022.
“I’m grateful and excited to get my dad back," Savannah told reporters. Earlier in the day, she tweeted about ‘god still writing your story’.
“He's Not Late. He's Not Distant. HE'S NOT DONE, & What is coming is MORE than you could've imagined. ❤️,” she wrote on X, platform formerly known as Twitter.
The 57-year-old Chrisley, best known for the TV series ‘Chrisley Knows Best’, and his wife and TV co-star, 52-year-old Julie were pardoned by Trump. Their daughter, Savannah Chrisley, stood outside the minimum security prison camp where her father was being held in Pensacola awaiting his release. She said her brother, Grayson, was picking up their mother in Lexington, Kentucky.
“We just want to get home. We want to be reunited,” she said, wearing a bubble gum pink MAGA hat and matching “Women for Trump” jacket. Chrisley added: “My parents have not spoken to each other, heard each others’ voices or seen each other in the past 2 ½ years.”
The Chrisleys’ TV show portrayed them as a tight-knit family with an extravagant lifestyle. Prosecutors at the couple’s 2022 trial said they spent lavishly on expensive cars, designer clothes, real estate and travel after taking out fraudulent bank loans worth millions of dollars and hiding their earnings from tax authorities.
Trump announced his intention to pardon them on Tuesday, saying the celebrity couple had been “given a pretty harsh treatment based on what I’m hearing.” It was another example of the president, himself a former reality TV star, pardoning high-profile friends, supporters, donors and former staffers.
Savannah Chrisley has been a vocal Trump supporter and endorsed his candidacy in a speech at the Republican National Convention last summer. Though she has complained that the case against her parents was politically motivated, they were indicted in 2019 under a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, Byung J. “BJay” Pak.
Regardless, Savannah Chrisley said officials in the Trump administration who reviewed her parents’ case had “seen the corruption.” She told reporters that the president delivered the news of the pardons himself, calling unexpectedly while she was at the grocery store.
“I didn’t have to do anything other than stand firm in my beliefs and my convictions and fight for my parents,” she said.
She paused to take photos with fans and supporters gathered outside the prison before getting into a vehicle that took her past its security checkpoint.
The Chrisleys’ attorney, Alex Little, said Tuesday that the pardon “corrects a deep injustice” in which the couple were “targeted because of their conservative values and high profile.”
Before she was pardoned, Julie Chrisley, 52, had been scheduled for release in January 2028, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, while Todd Chrisley, 56, was to remain behind bars until September 2032.
Prosecutors said at trial that the Chrisleys had not yet become TV stars when they and a former business partner submitted false documents to banks in the Atlanta area to obtain fraudulent loans. New loans were taken out to pay off the old ones, according to prosecutors, until Todd Chrisley filed for bankruptcy, walking away from more than $20 million in unpaid loans.
The defense argued that an IRS officer gave false testimony during the trial and that prosecutors lacked evidence to support convictions.
A panel of judges of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Chrisleys’ convictions last year.
Waiting to meet her father, Savannah Chrisley said her family was making plans to do a lot of catching up.
“We’re going to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, Christmases, all the things,” she said, “because we’re going to make up for the lost time.”
(With AP inputs)
