The daughter of two reality stars says Donald Trump decided to wipe clean her parents’ convictions for a massive fraud and tax evasion scheme because he doesn’t think they look like TV bad guys.
“He was like, you know, ‘You guys don’t look like terrorists to me’. [Those were] his exact words, which was pretty funny,” Savannah Chrisley told NewsNation of the president’s shock decision to pardon her parents Todd and Julie Chrisley, former stars of the USA network’s Chrisley Knows Best.
Federal authorities did not bring terrorism charges against the pair, who received sentences of 12 and seven years respectively in 2022 after being convicted of using false documents to defraud multiple banks out of more than $36 million in personal loans, as well as evading federal income taxes between 2013 and 2016.
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Chrisley nevertheless used her Tuesday interview with NewsNation to accuse IRS agents of not only “lying on the stand and referring to us as the Trumps of the South, [but] also accusing my family of terrorism just so they could run a financial report.”
She further said Trump had told her during their call that “their sentences were outrageous,” and that he chose to issue a full pardon because “they were treated unfairly from everyone that he has spoken to.”
In a clip of the phone call, posted to X by a White House comms aide, the president does not mention terrorism allegations against the reality TV stars or their children.
“The President is always pleased to give well-deserving Americans a second chance, especially those who have been unfairly targeted and overly prosecuted by an unjust justice system,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields told the Daily Beast.
“President Trump called Savannah and her brother from the Oval Office to personally inform them that he would be pardoning their parents, Todd and Julie Chrisley, whose sentences were far too harsh,” he added.
Trump, who has himself been convicted of bank fraud and found liable for tax fraud in the past, has lately issued pardons for a slew of white-collar criminals over the past several weeks.
Recipients have included a Virginia sheriff who accepted bribes in exchange for sheriff’s badges, and a Las Vegas councilwoman convicted of paying for plastic surgery and her daughter’s wedding with more than $70k stolen from a charity fund for police officers killed in the line of duty.
