Todd Chrisley speaks out for first time since Trump's pardon
Todd Chrisley addressed reporters on Friday in his first comments since President Donald Trump pardoned the formerly jailed reality TV star and his wife, Julie Chrisley, and released them from federal prison.
Speaking at a press conference at the Kimpton Aertson Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, Todd maintained his innocence.
"Whether you believe it or not — because I was you at some point — even though this pardon has happened, I still was convicted of something that I did not do," Todd said. "It could be you. It could be you, it could be any of you. And somewhere in this room, someone has had a family member that has been affected by the system."
"I understand the shame that's around it, but I refuse to feed into that because shame is like a cancer that just spreads and I have no shame," he added.
Trump issued pardons to Todd and Julie on Wednesday. The pair, known for their roles on the reality TV show 'Chrisley Knows Best,' were convicted in 2022 of tax evasion and defrauding banks to obtain personal loans worth more than $36 million and fund a lavish lifestyle.
Prosecutors said that the Chrisleys submitted false bank statements, audit reports and personal financial statements to Georgia community banks to obtain the loans.
They were found guilty by an Atlanta jury in 2022 and convicted of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Todd was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison and Julie was sentenced to seven years.
Julie was not at the press conference on Friday, but was seen the day before, leaving a butcher shop in Nashville, Tennessee.
Todd opened the press conference thanking God, Trump and Trump's 'pardon czar,' Alice Johnson, who was pardoned several years ago during the first Trump administration.
He also thanked one of his daughters, Savannah Chrisley, who played a pivotal role in petitioning for the pardons and was at Friday's press conference.
Savannah — who spoke at the Republican National Convention — took meetings with members of Trump's staff before and after the president was re-inaugurated to advocate for her parents to be released.
Savannah said she was misunderstood when critics claimed they were pardoned because of their celebrity status.
"I fought hard, and I was exhausted, and I begged for meetings. There was nothing — I was never too good to ask," she said. "And that's the thing — people think 'oh, you're a celebrity, you're white, you have money' that we got an upper hand and we didn't."
When a reporter asked him if he had any remorse and pointed to his wife's apology for her crimes in court last year, Todd pushed back.
"You're placed in a position as a defendant to either bow down and kiss the ass of the Department of Justice and accept responsibility for things that you did not do in order to avoid a stronger sentence," he said.
Todd said he felt "numb" when he received word that he was being pardoned.
"I had a staff member that came to me and said 'you've just been pardoned.' And I just looked at him, and he says, 'No, really, you've been pardoned. It's in the news. And so I walked up to call her, and she said 'It's true. It's true,'" he said referring to Savannah.
"All I could think about was the guys that I was leaving behind," he added.
He said that as he was leaving federal prison on Wednesday, hundreds of his fellow inmates lined up to say goodbye.
"They were saying 'Don't leave. Don't forget us. Don't forget us.' And my commitment is to them that I will never forget them."
Todd and Savannah vowed to help reform the criminal justice system and "expose the corruption."
Until then, they will be filming more reality television.
Todd confirmed that he and his wife started filming "literally the night that we got home, as soon as we got home."
"They've already got all the offers rolling in, so it's going to make life so much easier," Savannah said. "You'll see him on quite a few different shows, I have a feeling."
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
4 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
US Futures Slip on Trump Tariffs, Crude Surges
Asian markets are poised for a cautious open after US President Donald Trump said he would double tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Oil climbed around 2% as a further supply boost vied with heightened geopolitical risk. US equity futures slipped in early trading following Trump's announcement on Friday in the US, while Asian contracts point to a soft start when markets reopen. Crude gained after OPEC+ agreed to lift output by 411,000 barrels a day, and following an escalation in Ukraine's attacks on Russia.
USA Today
13 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump's tariffs are 'not going away' amid legal battles, White House says
Trump's tariffs are 'not going away' amid legal battles, White House says Show Caption Hide Caption Donald Trump doubling tariffs on foreign steel President Trump, during a visit to a U.S. Steel facility in Pennsylvania, announced he will double tariffs on foreign steel to 50%. WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump's tariffs are "not going away," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said, downplaying a pair of recent court decisions that declared the bulk of the president's tariffs illegal and momentarily paused the levies. Lutnick's June 1 comments on Fox News Sunday came days after the Court of International Trade ruled that Trump lacked the authority under the emergency power he cited on April 2 to impose reciprocal tariffs on imports from most countries. An appeals court later said Trump can continue to levy the tariffs while challenging the ruling. Lutnick predicted Trump would win on appeal. But he also referenced other tariff authorities if the higher courts agree with the trade court that Trump can't invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to bypass Congress to issue the tariffs. Trade whiplash: Appeals Court allows Trump to keep tariffs while appeal plays out "Rest assured, tariffs are not going away," Lutnick said. "He has so many other authorities that even in the weird and unusual circumstance where this was taken away, we just bring on another or another or another." In addition to the trade court's ruling, a federal district judge in Washington, D.C. blocked the Trump administration from collecting tariffs from a pair of Illinois toy importers, also ruling that the same 1977 law didn't grant Trump the powers to impose tariffs as he claimed. Trump addressed the legal battles in a Sunday post on Truth Social: "If the Courts somehow rule against us on Tariffs, which is not expected, that would allow other Countries to hold our Nation hostage with their anti-American Tariffs that they would use against us. This would mean the Economic ruination of the United States of America!" Amid the tariff whiplash from the court rulings, Trump announced on May 30 that he's doubling his tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from a 25% rate to 50%. 'Nobody's going to get around that': Donald Trump to double tariffs on foreign steel to 50% "I think it cost us a week ‒ maybe cost us a week," Lutnick said of the court decisions, arguing that other countries still want to make trade deals with the United States. "Everybody came right back to the table. Everybody is talking to us. You're going to see over the next couple of weeks really first-class deals for the American worker." For two months, Trump and White House officials have boasted about their prospects of using tariffs to secure trade agreements with other nations. So far, the administration has only secured a deal with the United Kingdom, in addition to a pact with China to slash massive tariffs on each other for 90 days. Trump later accused China of violating the tariff agreement on May 30, White House officials: Trump and China's Xi Jinping to speak soon, iron out trade fight Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that he expects Trump to soon talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping, expressing confidence trade issues will be "ironed out," including over critical minerals he said Beijing is refusing to open to trade. "They are withholding some of the products that they agreed to release during our agreement," Bessent said. "Maybe it's a glitch in the Chinese system. Maybe it's intentional. We'll see after the president speaks with the party chairman." The Chinese government said Xi has not spoken to Trump since his Jan. 20 inauguration. "I believe we'll see something very soon," Bessent said when asked whether a meeting is scheduled for Trump to talk to Xi. Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Apple Stock: Did President Trump Just Give Investors a Reason to Sell?
President Trump wants iPhones assembled in the United States, which would be expensive for Apple. The company is grappling with potentially rising costs and lawsuits coming for its cash cows. Shares of Apple look expensive today when considering all these long-term risks. 10 stocks we like better than Apple › Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has optimized its costs through a global manufacturing footprint. This relationship -- specifically with China -- may be coming to an end if President Donald Trump gets his way. The maker of the iPhone used the large and cheap labor market of China and other Asian nations to cheaply build and assemble its hardware before selling to consumers around the world, making a tidy profit in the process. Now, with large tariffs implemented on imports from China, Apple has begun to move some of its manufacturing to India in order to hedge its bets. However, this caught the ire of Trump, who said that Apple will face a 25% tariff on iPhone imports and that the products should be made in the United States in order to reshore manufacturing. According to analysts, building iPhones in the United States will greatly raise Apple's operating costs. Does that give investors a reason to sell the stock? Due to higher labor costs, assembling iPhones in the United States would increase Apple's variable costs for its hardware products. Analysts estimate it would cost Apple tens of billions of dollars to switch manufacturing to the United States while raising the per-unit price from $40 to $200 or higher. It is possible that Apple could make up these costs by raising the retail price on iPhones, but that is asking a lot from consumers when flagship devices already cost around $1,000. Last quarter, Apple's product division generated just under $25 billion in gross profit, which is revenue minus manufacturing/assembly costs. If Apple is forced to pay high tariffs or manufacture its phones in the United States, these large gross profits may disappear, leading to less bottom-line income and free cash flow. On top of the higher costs in the United States, Apple's supply chain wouldn't be immune from tariffs, with parts of the iPhone imported from Asia and still subjected to high tariffs as of this writing. In actuality, around half of Apple's gross profit comes from its high-margin services segment, which will not be directly impacted by tariffs. This includes revenue from the App Store and distribution agreements from Google to be the default search engine on the Safari web browser. In fiscal year 2024, $71 billion of Apple's total gross profit of $181 billion came from services. These high-margin revenue streams are under attack from antitrust lawsuits. Apple is now forced to allow mobile applications to use alternative payment methods to sidestep its 30% fee on payment processing, which could lead some profits to disappear. Current lawsuits may bar Apple from accepting a huge $20 billion (or more) annual payment from Google for default search engine status, another potential profit hit coming down the line. Even before these threats from tariffs and antitrust lawsuits, Apple was not firing on all cylinders compared to the other "Magnificent Seven" stocks. Over the last three years, Apple has only grown its revenue by a cumulative 3%. Alphabet's is up 29%, Microsoft's is up 36%, and Nvidia's is up a staggering 339% over that same time frame. The company is simply not growing much anymore as it fails to deliver any new hardware device that comes close to the popularity of the iPhone. In artificial intelligence (AI), Apple may be falling well behind the competition. It has failed to release updated services for Siri while letting competitors like Alphabet post cutting-edge breakthroughs in text, video, and image generation for consumers. This is not showing up in the numbers today, but Apple is at major risk of failing to win in the next great technology paradigm, which will impact its bottom line eventually despite its wide brand moat today. Apple stock is down 17.8% this year. I believe the stock still looks overvalued for investors today. It trades at a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 31, which is higher than the S&P 500 average and higher than Alphabet even though Alphabet is growing much faster. Low-growth stocks trading at a premium earnings multiple are dangerous to own, even if they have been strong performers in the past. Apple may see its earnings finally move in the wrong direction if tariffs, lawsuits, and failures to win in AI lead to deteriorating power in the global technology landscape. It wouldn't shock me if Apple's profits were lower in five years compared to today. For these reasons, Apple stock is an easy sell from your portfolio right now. Before you buy stock in Apple, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Apple wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $651,049!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $828,224!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 979% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 171% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Brett Schafer has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Apple Stock: Did President Trump Just Give Investors a Reason to Sell? was originally published by The Motley Fool
