Trump set to pardon famous reality stars after they were convicted for fraud and tax evasion
Topics: Donald Trump, Court, Film and TV
Joe Yates
Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Gregg DeGuire
Topics: Donald Trump, Court, Film and TV
Incarcerated stars of a former reality TV show are set to have their fraud and tax evasion convictions quashed.
President Donald Trump has said he will intervene with the justice system to pardon Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were followed around by TV crews for 10 years as part of Chrisley Knows Best.
The show followed self-made millionaire Todd, his devoted wife Julie and their five children, as they got about their day-to-day life, but was canceled after a jury in 2022 found the pair guilty of tax evasion and defrauding banks out of over $36 million in loans.
Todd received a 12-year sentence and Julie was told she must spend the next seven years in prison.
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The pair were convicted of fraud whereby they produced fake financial statements to give off the impression they were way richer than they were.
In the end, they acquired loans that prosecutors claimed were used to buy cars, travel the world, and generally live a life that they couldn’t actually afford.
The property tycoons, whose earnings see them sit among the top one percent of Americans, will be excused thanks to an interview their daughter Savannah - who appeared in all 205 episodes of Chrisley Knows Best - had with the POTUS' daughter-in-law Lara Trump.
Savannah claimed that the prosectors in her parents' case were both Democrats and had donated to the Democratic Party, before mentioning how they referred to her family as 'the Trumps of the south' during trial.
The Fox News interview was enough to see the 78-year-old Republican call Savannah and pardon her parents.
White House aide Margo Martin captured Trump on the phone.
In the video she posted online, Trump can be heard saying: "Your parents are going to be free and clean and I hope we can do that by tomorrow.
"I don't know them but give them my regards, and wish them a good life."
In the interview with Fox News, Savannah detailed how she is now the guardian of her two siblings, while explaining how challenging it was to shake her 'ditsy blonde' public image to become a prison reform advocate that people take seriously.
"People think it was a big reality show but really it was a scripted comedy, and it's been hard for me to break away from that mold into what I'm doing now because people look at me as this ditsy dumb blonde and they don't give me a chance to prove myself," she told Lara.
"And it all started with both my parents going to federal prison two-and-a-half years ago, and I knew nothing about prisons. I thought that bad people go to prison and that is what it is - and that is so far from the truth."