PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump signed pardons Wednesday for reality TV stars Julie and Todd Chrisley, who were serving federal prison sentences after being convicted three years ago of bank fraud and tax evasion.
The pardons paved the way for the couple, best known for the TV series “Chrisley Knows Best,” to be freed hours later. Todd Chrisley was released from a minimum-security prison camp in Pensacola in the evening, and Julie Chrisley left a facility in Lexington, Kentucky, according to Shannen Sharpe, a spokesperson for the couple’s attorney.
“We just want to get home. We want to be reunited,” the couple’s daughter, Savannah Chrisley, told reporters outside the Florida prison earlier as she awaited her father. She said her brother Grayson was meeting their mother in Kentucky.
“My parents have not spoken to each other, heard each others’ voices or seen each other in the past 2 ½ years,” said Savannah Chrisley, who wore a bubble gum pink MAGA hat and matching “Women for Trump” jacket.
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.”
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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.
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This story has been corrected to show that Todd Chrisley’s age is 56, not 57.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source apnews.com ’
