ATLANTA — It has been 2 ½ years since Julie and Todd Chrisley were convicted of fraud and sent to federal prison, with their daughter, Savannah, being their biggest fighter to try to get them released.
When her parents went to prison, Savannah ended up becoming an instant parent to her younger siblings, Chloe and Grayson.
Chrisley took to Fox News over the weekend, where she talked to Lara Trump about her fight to free her parents, how she says she’s come under scrutiny because of it, and the parallels she said she sees with President Donald Trump.
“All of this feels to you like it was targeted, yes, and it was targeted because your family was successful, because your family was on television, and you became a bit of a mark in some ways,” Trump asked Chrisley.
“They were unfairly targeted due to their celebrity status,” Chrisley said about the investigation into her parents.
Even though Todd and Julie were brought up on federal charges and were even convicted under Trump’s first presidency, she says Democrats in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office are the reason her parents are now behind bars.
“Our case was in Fulton County, Georgia, and originally, they were not going to prosecute because they said it was very weak. They didn’t have the evidence that they needed to prosecute, that it just it wasn’t a case. It took nine years to issue a federal indictment. Both prosecutors were Democrats. They have donated to Democratic candidates and from at trial, we knew it was game over,” Chrisley said. “They referred to us as the Trumps of the South at trial, the prosecutors did.”
The young Chrisley has said before that the judge in the case against her mother resentenced Julie Chrisley to 84 months in prison out of retaliation for her being so outspoken about what she says is the injustice against her parents.
She echoed those same sentiments in this weekend’s interview.
“The judge in our case used it against me in the courtroom. The judge looked at me and said, and to the person who has these minor children your custody, you need to be more concerned with these children’s wellbeing than you are spreading false information to the public,” Chrisley said.
Chrisley has custody of her younger siblings, Chloe and Grayson.
“I wasn’t expecting to get two kids. None of us expected the trial to go the way that it did. I can’t imagine how hard it was for my parents to turn their kids over to someone else,” Chrisley said.
Chrisley has used this experience to fight for prison reform. Last year, Savannah spoke at the Republican National Convention as well as the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual gathering.
She has also been seen at Mar-a-Lago and the White House to make her case to President Donald Trump to pardon her parents.
Savannah has used her weekly podcast to advocate against the conditions that she says her parents are living.
Lara Trump asked Savannah how they were doing.
“They’re okay. It’s extremely sad to see how these individuals are treated. I mean, my mom, she’s in a facility in Lexington. In Kentucky to where there is no air conditioning, regardless of what someone does, I think you should have basic bare necessities, and it’s just heartbreaking to see that my mom is in conditions like that,” Chrisley said. “I talk to them every day. It’s short because they only get an allotted amount of minutes a month. So I do talk to them. They’re always calling, checking in, making sure the kids are good. I’m good, but it’s hard.”
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The Chrisleys were initially indicted in August 2019. Prosecutors said the couple submitted fake documents to banks when applying for loans.
Julie Chrisley sent a fake credit report and bank statements showing far more money than they had in their accounts to a California property owner in July 2014 while trying to rent a home.
A few months after they began using the home, in October 2014, they refused to pay rent, causing the owner to have to threaten them with eviction.
The money the Chrisleys received from their reality television show, “Chrisley Knows Best,” went to a company they controlled called 7C’s Productions, but they didn’t declare it as income on federal tax returns, prosecutors said.
The couple failed to file or pay their federal income taxes on time for multiple years.
The family had moved to Tennessee by the time the indictment was filed, but the criminal charges stem from when they lived in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.
Channel 2 Action News first started investigating the Chrisleys in 2017, when we learned that Todd Chrisley had likely evaded paying Georgia state income taxes for several years.
Court documents obtained by Channel 2 Action News showed that by 2018, the Chrisleys owed the state nearly $800,000 in liens.
The couple eventually went to trial and a federal jury found them guilty of bank fraud and tax evasion.
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