A reality TV star who was imprisoned for defrauding banks of tens of millions of dollars before being pardoned in May by Donald Trump says there is nothing for him to be sorry about.
“I don’t have an apology to give you or anyone else over the money that I’ve made,” Todd Chrisley said in an interview with ABC News that was posted online Monday.
Speaking to the network alongside his wife, Julie, who was also imprisoned and then pardoned by the president, Chrisley’s comments were some of his most extensive comments yet about his and his spouse’s abbreviated experiences behind bars.
He joked that his first post-pardon shower back home was as exciting as his “first sexual encounter”. And, as his family begins planning to return to television with a new reality show on Lifetime, he said “it doesn’t matter what someone else’s opinion” of him is.
“No one’s opinion of me has ever caused me to question who I am at the core,” the former co-star of Chrisley Knows Best said to ABC News. “So I don’t worry about someone else’s opinion.”
Chrisley Knows Best aired on USA Network from 2014 to 2023, depicting Todd as a wealthy real estate developer and entrepreneur who was raising a family with Julie in their suburban Atlanta mansion.
But in 2019, during Trump’s first presidency, the federal government charged the Chrisleys with tax evasion and bank fraud. Jurors in 2022 convicted the couple of defrauding banks of at least $30m, leaving Todd to be sentenced to 12 years in prison and Julie to seven years.
The couple’s daughter Savannah Chrisley was a vocal Trump advocate as he successfully ran for a second presidency in November 2024. Trump then pardoned Todd and Julie on 27 May, a little more than four months after he was sworn back into the Oval Office.
Trump personally called Savannah to inform her of her parents’ pardons, according to a White House video.
The Chrisleys’ pardons freed them from prison after serving less than three years. Their pardons came amid a series of clemencies that Trump gave to supporters in what evidently was a broader rebuke against a justice system that had convicted him of criminally falsifying business records months before he retook the White House.
Some particularly criticized the Chrisleys’ pardons because an appeals court had upheld their jury convictions.
Nonetheless, as ABC News noted, Todd argued that the makeup of the couple’s jury was questionable and the president was right to pardon him and Julie.
Julie recounted to the network that she had made some everlasting friendships while incarcerated. “I have met some amazing women … that I will be friends with till the day that I die,” she told ABC.
Yet, unsurprisingly, Todd said he and his wife were relieved to be out of prison early as they weigh whether to move to South Carolina and film themselves converting a mansion into a hotel.
“You don’t realize how much your freedom means to you until you don’t have it,” he remarked.