Todd Chrisley says that he has “no shame” as he appeared in public for the first time since being freed from prison following an intervention from President Donald Trump.
“Shame is like a cancer that just spreads, and I have no shame,” he said in reference to his case where he was convicted of tax evasion.
Chrisley spoke on Friday from Nashville as he addressed his pardon. He spoke next to his daughter Savannah Chrisley, who lobbied the administration for her parents’ release. Julie Chrisley was not at the press conference. The multimillionaire Trump supporters, whose show Chrisley Knows Best ran from 2014 to 2023, were found guilty of conspiring to defraud community banks out of more than $30 million in fraudulent loans in 2022.
“We're blessed to have our family back, and we're blessed to be coming back to television, because we do have a much bigger story,” Todd Chrisley told reporters at the briefing, touting their new TV show. He added that they started filming for the show “as soon as we got home” from prison.
Savannah Chrisley addressed what she said was “the biggest misconception” about the couple’s pardon following accusations of “corruption.”
“The biggest misconception right now is that I either paid for a pardon or slept for a pardon,” she said.
“That’s something I would’ve done,” her father interjected.
She added that the pardon came about from “countless hours,” “time and money” she spent on traveling to D.C., where she was “in the right room at the right time” with the “right people.”
Todd Chrisley was also asked by a reporter whether he had “any remorse.”
“Do I have any remorse?” he asked. “I would have remorse if it was something that I did.”
The family announced earlier in the week they were making a TV comeback: The Untitled Chrisleys Project on Lifetime. “We have a new show coming out on Lifetime, and it will document all of these things,” Savannah Chrisley said, per ABC News. “And we're excited. We literally could not have done it. It's all God and President Trump at this point.”
Prosecutors said the couple walked away from their responsibility for repayment when Todd Chrisley declared bankruptcy.
Julie Chrisley was sentenced to seven years in federal prison, and Todd Chrisley got 12 years behind bars. The couple was also ordered to pay $17.8 million in restitution. The couple have been appealing their case since being sentenced in November 2022, and have been in prison since January 2023.
Savannah Chrisley, who has pushed for the pardon, revealed in an interview that Trump said her parents “didn’t look like terrorists” and he wanted to give them “the full pardon.”
“Well, he did say, he was like, you know, ‘You guys don't look like terrorists to me,’ she told NewsNation's On Balance with Leland Vittert Monday. “His exact words, which was pretty funny.”
Critics accused the Trump administration of “blatant corruption” for pardoning the Chrisleys.
“For context: The Chrisleys are well-known Trump supporters,” Ally Sammarco, a Democratic strategist, told her followers on X.
“Trump just pardoned TV personalities Todd and Julie Chrisley, who conspired to defraud Atlanta-area banks out of $30 million in fraudulent loans. In Trump’s America, crimes are celebrated and prison sentences are cut short,” said Harry Sisson, a Democratic influencer, on X, calling it “actual insanity.”
In another post, Sisson noted that the pardons for the Chrisleys come as Trump also pardoned “a corrupt Virginia sheriff who took over $75,000 in bribes” (Trump called him a “wonderful person”), and a “man convicted of serious tax crimes, whose mom donated $1 million to Trump and worked on his campaigns.”
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