ATLANTA — Former reality TV star Julie Chrisley is blasting a federal judge after they resentenced her to 7 years in prison after an appeals court vacated her sentence on fraud charges.
In a court filing Friday, Chrisley, 51, accused the court of retaliating against her during the September hearing.
“The hearing and sentence can only leave on impression to any reasonable observer: the sentence was vindictive,” the document said. “Instead, the court spent more time admonishing Mrs. Chrisley’s daughter, who was in the courtroom, for public statements she made critical of the case, which the court learned about off the record.”
“Mrs. Chrisely received a vindictive and unfair sentence from a judge personally biased against her and her family,” the document said.
Following September’s resentencing, Savannah Chrisley spoke to reporters, saying “This is 100% injustice.”
She later took to her podcast to talk about the alleged retaliation.
“It has been in retaliation for us exercising our right to an appeal and being granted, in part, a successful appeal. And then yesterday, the judge showed that this was more than just us exercising our right to an appeal. This was her not liking how outspoken I am and how I’m out here telling the truth about corruption that’s occurring,” Savannah Chrisley said in October. “It felt like it was a punch in the gut because to think that I did something that harmed my mother’s ability to be a free woman, that one stung really bad.”
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Friday’s document goes on to accuse the judge of issuing a harsher sentence than what was required by federal guidelines and that the judge never said the reasons for doing so.
“Nothing in the record of the court’s explanations supported a harsher sentence,” Julie Chrisley’s attorney Alex Little argued. “The district court provided no rationale for the harsher sentence. The sentence was therefore presumptively vindictive.”
Because of that reason, Little said, “The court should vacate her sentence and reassign sentencing to a different judge on remand.”
Julie Chrisley and her husband Todd were charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and tax fraud back in 2019.
Julie Chrisley was also charged with wire fraud and obstruction of justice.
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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