The Chrisleys played Trump like a fiddle
The reality TV stars shamelessly sucked up to the president--and got a pardon in return
A hot tip for white collar criminals looking to get out of prison early: suck up to Trump as blatantly and as publicly as possible.
Also, it helps if you’re already a well-known reality star with a large social media following.
That’s the message the president sent this week when he pardoned Todd and Julie Chrisley, who rose to fame on the unscripted series Chrisley Knows Best and were convicted in 2022 on federal charges of bank fraud and tax evasion.
Their twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Savannah, who appeared on Chrisley Knows Best while still a teenager, has been crusading to bring her parents home since they reported to prison in January 2023.
On Tuesday night, she shared the news of their impending pardon on Instagram.
Wearing a white and gold MAGA hat and a large bedazzled crucifix, Savannah said she received a call from the president while she was walking into Sam’s Club, informing her he was granting them clemency.
“I will forever be grateful for President Trump, his administration, and everyone along the way,” she said.
By Wednesday, the Chrisleys were out of prison and on their way home to Nashville.
They weren’t the only financial criminals Trump handed get-out-of-jail-for-free cards to this week: he also granted a full and unconditional pardon to Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who took millions of dollars out of his employees’ paychecks and used it to buy luxury items including a yacht (and whose mother attended a $1 million-a-plate fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago last month). In his pardon application, Walczak claimed he was targeted by the Biden administration because of his mother’s long-standing support for Trump.
Savannah Chrisley has sung a similar tune, claiming, with little evidence, that her parents were victims of a politically motivated prosecution.
In a speech at the Republican National Convention last year, she said that her family “Was persecuted by rogue prosecutors in Fulton County due to our public profile… and our conservative beliefs.” (Nevermind that her parents were indicted by a federal grand jury in 2019, when Trump was still in the White House.)
Noting that they were prosecuted “in the most heavily Democrat county in the state,” she drew an explicit link between her parents’ alleged persecution and Trump’s legal woes.
“Donald J. Trump has only one conviction that matters, and that is his conviction to make America great again,” she said.
By appealing so directly to Trump’s perpetual sense of victimhood and grievance, the younger Chrisley was as shrewd as she was shameless. She correctly intuited that Trump doesn’t care if you are actually an innocent victim of overzealous prosecutors, as long as you’re willing to loudly, insistently claim that he was.
The irony is that the Chrisleys were not outspoken conservatives or Trump supporters until 1. They wound up in prison, and 2. He ran for re-election.
The family rose to fame more than a decade ago with Chrisley Knows Best, which premiered on USA in 2014, a time when cable networks were scrambling to find their version of Duck Dynasty and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo—reality shows about “outrageous” Southern families that drew massive audiences.
The series followed Todd, supposedly a successful real estate entrepreneur; his second wife, Juliel, and their three kids, Savannah, Chase, and Grayson. (Todd also has two children from a previous marriage, but they rarely appeared on the show.) To use a favorite industry buzzword, Chrisley Knows Best was “aspirational,” emphasizing the family’s lavish lifestyle, from the $300,000 they claimed to spend on clothing every year to their 30,000 square foot home in the Atlanta suburbs.
The show was an instant hit for the USA network, and several spin-offs quickly followed.
Part of what made Chrisley Knows Best was Todd’s brash, unfiltered personality. He took pride in freely speaking his mind, mocking Julie’s “camel toe” on camera and addressing speculation about his sexuality by saying, “I’m flattered that people think I can get laid on both ends.”
And while Todd occasionally mentioned politics in interviews or on social media, he rarely took a definitive stance on specific candidates.
In a 2015 tweet, he described himself as “conservative with my money and liberal with my views.” The following year, he expressed despair over the presidential election. “When you have a choice between Hillary and Donald, we’re up shit creek without a paddle,” he said. “If you ask who I’m gonna vote for, I could not tell you.”
In 2020, he shared pictures of his family members voting on Election Day and urged his followers to vote, but did not back a specific candidate (Savannah shared a similar post that year). On an episode of their podcast, Chrisley Confessions, Todd said he disagreed with Trump on many things, including his Twitter habit.
If the family supported Trump, they did so quietly, in the privacy of the voting booth—not on TV or social media.
Their charmed existence began to change in 2019, when the Chrisleys were indicted for tax evasion and bank fraud dating back to their pre-fame days. They were charged with using fake bank statements and other doctored paperwork—including “a fabricated credit report that had been physically cut and then glued or taped together”—in order to obtain millions of dollars in loans and leases. They were also accused of dodging taxes on the money they did earn.
“Celebrities face the same justice that everyone does,” said U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak in a press release.
When the case finally went to trial in 2022, further bombshells came to light (including a claim that Todd had an affair with his former business partner). The Chrisleys were convicted on all charges in May 2022. Todd was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in the fraud, while Julie received seven years. (At this point, USA finally canceled the show.)
Since her parents were convicted, Savannah has rebranded herself as a fierce advocate for criminal justice reform and committed herself to clearing their names.
She has taken the cause to a podcast called Unlocked, where she’s interviewed other people who think their families have been unfairly attacked, like Julie Chen-Moonves; to Instagram, where she has nearly 3 million followers; and even to the Fox reality show The Masked Singer, where she performed in an Afghan hound costume to cheer up her parents behind bars. On social media, when she’s not sharing Bible quotes or peddling her beauty line, she has spoken out about the supposedly inhumane conditions in the prisons where her parents were held.
Over roughly the same period, the once apolitical Savannah also became a vocal Trump supporter.
Last year, she donated $404 to his campaign, in what appears to be her first and only contribution to a political campaign. (Searches for donations by Todd and Julie yield no results.)
When Trump was convicted in May, Savannah seized the opportunity to ingratiate herself to the Republican candidate.
“It is undeniably a somber day, not only for his supporters but for anyone who believes in the principles of fairness and justice,” she said on Instagram. The post, featuring pictures of Savannah with Trump, was accompanied by a Christian rock song (Sample lyrics: “I trust in God, my Savior/The one who will never fail”).
She soon began sporting MAGA hats in every conceivable color (sometimes her little sister Chloe, 12, wore them too). In July, she enthusiastically endorsed Trump onstage at the RNC.
Since his win in November, Savannah has relentlessly pushed for clemency, partying at Mar-a-Lago and traveling to Washington DC to make her case in person.
Todd has also gotten in on the act from behind bars. In February, his lawyer told TMZ that Todd was being “shaken down” by prison guards because he was a Trump supporter. (Ah yes, those famously liberal prison guards.)
It was all ridiculous, part of a bluntly obvious ploy to curry Trump’s favor—and, rather depressingly, it worked like a charm. And Savannah didn’t even have to spend a small fortune on Walmart steak to make it happen.
On Wednesday, Savannah spoke to reporters outside a Florida prison as she waited for her father’s release. Clad in yet another MAGA hat (this one hot pink) and matching jacket, she praised Trump as a magnanimous champion of the wrongfully convicted.
“I will forever be grateful that we have an administration that is reuniting families,” she said of the man who took out full-page ads in four New York newspapers calling for the death penalty to be reinstated and used against the Central Park Five.
The pardon has sparked complaints from at least one reality TV personality. On Wednesday, Joe Exotic, star of the Netflix series Tiger King, who is currently serving a 22-year sentence on a murder-for-hire conviction and is hoping for a pardon, posted on X, “I guess being innocent isn’t enough in America.”
Neither, it turns out, is being guilty.
Meredith Blake is the Culture columnist for The Contrarian
At the White House there is a big red sign with white lettering that reads “FOR SALE"
Jesus F-ing Christ.