US President Donald Trump says he’ll be issuing a pardon for a couple who starred in a reality TV show before being jailed in a multi-million dollar fraud and tax evasion case.
Todd and Julie Chrisley were cast in the reality TV series Chrisley Knows Best, which followed the duo in their career as property tycoons in Nashville and Atlanta.
But in June 2022 a jury found them guilty of tax evasion and defrauding banks out of more than $36m (£26.6m) in loans.
Earlier this month the couple’s daughter, Savannah Chrisley, was interviewed by the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, on Fox News.
Todd and Julie Chrisley were first indicted in 2019, then faced a three-week trial on fraud, tax evasion and obstruction of justice charges three years later.
Prosecutors said that they submitted fake documents to community banks, spending the money on luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate, and travel before using new fraudulent loans to pay off the old ones.
After spending the money, Todd Chrisley filed for bankruptcy. The couple then used a company to hide income from their TV show and avoid paying a $500,000 tax bill, prosecutors said in 2022.
The couple blamed a former employee, but were convicted after a three-week trial. Todd Chrisley was sentenced to 12 years in prison and Julie Chrisley was sentenced to seven years. Their accountant, Peter Tarantino, was also convicted and received a three-year sentence.
In a video posted online by White House aide Margo Martin, Trump was shown speaking on the phone with the Chrisley children.
“Your parents are going to be free and clean and I hope we can do that by tomorrow,” the president said. “I don’t know them but give them my regards, and wish them a good life.”
Savannah Chrisley is a podcaster and social media influencer who also appeared on several other reality shows and campaigned for Trump, including a speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention, where she alleged that her parents had been persecuted by “rogue prosecutors” and that the US has a “two-faced justice system”.
On Lara Trump’s Fox News programme, My View, broadcast on 18 May, she was billed as a prison reform advocate and claimed that her parents had been prosecuted for their political beliefs and called their case “eerily similar” to the criminal charges that were lodged against President Trump.
“Both prosecutors were Democrats, they have donated to Democratic candidates,” Ms Chrisley told Lara Trump. “At trial, we knew it was game over.”
Chrisley Knows Best was broadcast on the station USA Network starting in 2014 and inspired a number of spinoffs including According to Chrisley and Growing Up Chrisley.
It’s the second pardon Trump has flagged in the space of two days. On Monday, he granted a pardon to a former Virginia sheriff who was convicted on fraud and bribery charges.
A jury found former Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins guilty of accepting more than $75,000 (£55,000) in bribes last December, in exchange for making several businessmen into law enforcement officers without them being trained.
Jenkins, a long-time supporter of Trump, was sentenced in March to 10 years in prison.
By BBC News
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