ATLANTA — Savannah Chrisley says the last couple of years dealing with her parents’ legal woes have humbled her and helped her find a sense of purpose.
Chrisley talked about everything during the latest episode of her podcast.
“God has a way of humbling you,” she said during a discussion with her guest Jeff Frankenstein of the Christian Rock band “Newsboys.”
Since Todd and Julie Chrisley reported to prison, Savannah has become an advocate to bring to light the terrible conditions she says her parents have been forced to live in.
“If it wasn’t for both my parents being in prison, I wouldn’t about what was happening. Like, let’s face it, you don’t until you’re slapped in the face with it. You just don’t know any better,” Savannah said.
Savannah said sitting in the visitation room of the prison her father is in in Florida, made her realize a greater purpose.
“I always thought like, ‘Oh, you’re in prison, then yeah, you belong there.’ Like you’re a bad person, you’re this but when you actually start looking into it and educating yourself, you’re like, ‘Ah, OK, it’s not all that I thought it was,’” Savannah said.
Savannah also shared a story where she said she was on the verge of committing suicide and it was a message from her father that had a huge impact on her.
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“I was 15 years old. I had gone through so much trauma and all kinds of stuff. And I tried committing suicide. And I came home from the hospital that next morning, and there was a daily devotional and my dad’s email, and it was from Joel Osteen. And it was Romans 8:28. And it basically says every hardship adversity you go through, I’ll turn around use it to your advantage,” Savannah said. “In the snap of a finger, I went from why me to why not me? You know, like, what makes me better than anyone else to have to deal with this? And so, let’s figure out what the purpose is.”
Todd and Julie Chrisley, mostly known for their reality TV series “Chrisley Knows Best,” and Peter Tarantino, their accountant, were found guilty in 2022 of conspiring to defraud banks and the IRS out of millions of dollars and are serving a combined 15 years in prison. The Chrisleys were originally sentenced to a combined 19 years in prison, but the sentences were reduced in September 2023.
We learned this week that Julie Chrisley’s resentencing hearing has been scheduled for September after a federal appeals judge vacated her sentence on fraud charges.
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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