Shortly after Julie and Todd Chrisley were sent to federal prison in Nov. 2022, their daughter Savannah took a gamble.
She “came out” as a Republican and started to publicly cozy up to the Trump family as part of her strategy to free her mom and dad, sentenced to seven and 12 years respectively for bank and tax fraud of over $30 million in loans.
This week it was finally realized as President Trump pardoned them both and they are already back at home with their family.
However, that dream was still distant in September 2023 when Savannah, 27, appeared on Lara Trump’s “The Right View” podcast to talk about her parents’ plight and prison reform.
She made sure to mention how Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutors started her parents’ trial by calling them the “Trumps of the South” — a line she would go on to repeat many times while campaigning for their release.
She added to Lara, wife of Eric Trump: “For me that was, it should scare people, that we have prosecutors using such a polarizing statement to potentially sway the jurors.”
Savannah was also honest about being new to prison reform, telling the host: “I’m like the poster child for being tone-deaf to our [prison] system. It didn’t affect me, why should I care? And then, as my parents are in there and they start telling me these things, I’m like, wait a second, it’s 115 degrees and you have no air conditioning.”
Judging by their interactions on the podcast, it appeared to be the first time the ladies had spoken with each other.
Getting Savannah on the show was also quite a big score for Lara’s podcast, which has a following of 28,000 on Instagram, far less than Savannah’s own podcast which has 156,000 followers and gets an average of around 100,000 more views on YouTube per show than “The Right View.”
From there the two ladies seem to have formed a strong bond, and Savannah became one of the more prominent celebrity voices behind then-candidate Trump.
She started donning pink MAGA hats and putting her political views to her almost three million personal Instagram followers, which she says resulted in “lost deals” from sponsors.
She then appeared at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July 2024, where her speech focused on the “injustices” her parents suffered in prison and the “inhumane” treatment they had been subject to, which was later hailed as “powerful”.
Savannah appeared alongside Lara again at a Women for Trump rally in Phoenix in October 2024 and earlier this month their relationship went full circle as she appeared on Fox’s “My View with Lara Trump” to again speak about prison reform. She followed that appearance up with an Instagram post calling Lara “my sweet friend.”
Savannah also appears to have visited the White House twice during the Trump presidency, in March and in April, while she golfed at Trump National Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida, in May.
Now her parents have been freed, others in their orbit say they hope the Chrisleys will continue their fight on behalf of the incarcerated and wrongly convicted.
“Savannah presents herself as an advocate for prison reform, but time will tell if her advocacy is real or limited to advocating only for her parents,” Peter Tarantino, the family’s accountant who was convicted alongside Julie and Todd, but not pardoned, told The Post.
Tarantino, who was sentenced to three years and paid a $35,000 fine, added “I absolutely deserve a pardon,” and said he has also been contacting the president’s office.
“I don’t have the platform or resources the Chrisley’s have, but I intend to pursue my options… They used their platform [to] profess their innocence but never made any statements that benefited me,” he added.
However, he added of Savannah: “I think she did what any daughter would do in a similar situation.”
What does it take to get a personal pardon for your parents from the President of the United States? Apparently years of cozying up to the Trump family.
