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'Another Corrupt Pardon': Trump Pardons Reality TV Stars Convicted of Tax Evasion and Bank Fraud
"It appears Trump is no longer concerned about appearances or the pretense of propriety. He's corrupting the pardon process," wrote one MSNBC political contributor on Tuesday.
May 28, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday reportedly signed full pardons for Todd and Julie Chrisley, reality TV stars known for the program "Chrisley Knows Best," who were convicted in 2022 of evading taxes and financial fraud to prop up their luxurious lifestyles.
Todd and Julie Chrisley were sentenced to 12 and seven years in federal prison, respectively, in 2022. The charges brought against them included conspiring to defraud banks in the Atlanta area in order to get ahold of over $36 million in personal loans. "The Chrisleys spent the money on luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate, and travel—and used new fraudulent loans to pay back old ones," according to a 2022 release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia. Both of the Chrisleys have maintained their innocence, according to CNN.
Citing an unnamed White House official, CNN reported Wednesday that Trump has signed pardons for them, though as of mid-day the pardons are still not listed on the Department of Justice's website.
On Tuesday, Trump's communications adviser, Margo Martin, posted a video on X that showed Trump making a phone call to the Chrisleys' daughter, Savannah Chrisley, letting her know of his plans to grant pardons for her parents. In the video, Trump says that "it's a great thing because your parents are going to be free and clean, and hopefully we can do it by tomorrow."
Reacting to the news about the Chrisleys, Steve Benen, an MSNBC political contributor and producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," argued on Wednesday that in his first term, Trump "wielded his pardon power as a corrupt weapon," but many of his eye-brow raising pardon actions took place after he lost in the 2020 election.
"But as his second term gets underway, it appears Trump is no longer concerned about appearances or the pretense of propriety. He's corrupting the pardon process; he knows that he's corrupting the pardon process; he knows that we know that he's corrupting the pardon process; and he's doing it anyway," Benen wrote. "The president seems eager to act with impunity, confident in the knowledge that a Republican-led Congress will shrug its shoulders with indifference."
The X account Republicans against Trump blasted the move on Tuesday, calling it "another corrupt pardon."
Trump began his second term with multiple high-profile clemency actions, including issuing pardons and commutations for over 1,500 rioters convicted in connection to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol and pardoning Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
More recently, Trump in April pardoned Florida healthcare executive Paul Walczak, who was recently sentenced to over a year in prison stemming from tax crimes that he pleaded guilty to.
In Walczak's pardon application, submitted last fall, he argued that his criminal prosecution was motivated more by his mother's support of Trump, including her financial support for Trump's campaigns, rather than the crimes he had admitted to, according to The New York Times. The outlet also reported that Walczak's mother, Elizabeth Fago, attended a fundraiser at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club last month that was a $1-million-per-person dinner. Weeks later, Trump pardoned Walczak.
Savannah Chrisley has spoken publicly to highlight her parents' case.
Savannah Chrisley spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024 and suggested that her parents were targeted because prosecutors had some sort of political agenda. "My family was persecuted by rogue prosecutors in Fulton County due to our public profile—I know, Fulton County, they know how to do it, don't they—due to our public profile and conservative beliefs," Chrisley said. According to The Washington Post, she also went to the White House in February to make the case for their pardons.
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What Was Teamsters’ Leadership Thinking?
Being Trump’s buddy is not going to save you from the end of the NLRB and a return to pre-New Deal hostility to all forms of union power.
Sep 22, 2024
Why should anyone give a damn about a labor union’s presidential endorsement? A few reasons. Philosophically, since a good union is a democratic organization, an endorsement allows a politician to claim the legitimate support of a large group of hardworking Americans, that most treasured of groups. Politically, a good union’s endorsement also comes with money for the candidate and a team of union members to make calls and knock on doors, a valuable asset for any campaign. And practically, an endorsement allows a union to shore up support for its own priorities by cozying up to a future elected leader. A union backs a politician, the politician fights for the union’s needs, and the mutually beneficial cycle carries on.
The Teamsters’ non-endorsement of any candidate for U.S. president this week is notable in that it fails on every last one of those metrics.
In fairness, it’s not like every big union in America is some paragon of political virtue. Many or most big unions have a distinctly undemocratic endorsement process, dictated by a small group of leaders in a room rather than by an honest vote of the membership. (This can cause internal uproars, as we saw in 2020 when a number of union locals that supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) railed publicly against their parent unions’ endorsements of U.S. President Joe Biden.) Credit the Teamsters for, at least, releasing some “member polling” data showing that Biden was the candidate supported by most Teamsters this summer, but that Trump had taken a lead after Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race. This fig leaf of democratic legitimacy is undermined by the fact that there was no methodology released—one number came from “Town Hall Straw Polls,” and another from an “Electronic Member Poll” that some members griped they hadn’t heard about. The American Prospect reported that the eight rank-and-file Teamster members who attended Kamala Harris’ sit down meeting with the union subsequently said they supported her—though the General Board proceeded to vote 14-3 for no endorsement.
A true union leader, who understands the stakes of this election, must stand up and tell his members: “Hey, if Trump is elected, unions, the working class, women, and your immigrant brothers and sisters are going to be fucked in the following ways.”
In reality, there is every indication that Teamsters president Sean O’Brien just… kinda likes former President Donald Trump. He posed for pictures with Trump in the lobby of Teamsters headquarters, unnecessarily. He had a private meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He had the union donate $45,000 to the Republican National Committee, alongside a donation to the Democrats. And, to cap it off, he gave a prime time speech at the Republican National Convention, mixing pro-worker slogans with ingratiating compliments to a smiling Trump. In doing so, O’Brien made himself into a useful patsy for the false and dangerous attempt by the Republicans to brand themselves as some kind of “working class” party.
O’Brien’s long flirtation with Trump has been marked by notable levels of insincerity. The Teamsters leader will say: I’m open to both sides! We’re having a fair and transparent process! This seems believable, as long as you are a child who has never encountered the American political system in action before. Want to have all candidates come to your union’s HQ to take questions? Great! You do not need to also pose for a publicity photo that they can use in their specious fascist propaganda. Want to maintain open lines of communication with both parties? Sure. That is vastly different from giving a prime time speech at a party’s convention, which is a television event that expressly exists to help get one candidate elected. Acting as if it is possible to speak at the RNC while maintaining independence is a bit like sitting in a car with the windows rolled up as your friends smoke a pound of weed, and claiming that you yourself are drug free. Have you noticed where you are, man?
Want to work with both sides of the aisle on your union’s political priorities? That’s fine. That’s great. Judge politicians not on their party label, but on what they actually do for workers. So here is a summary of the two sides in the upcoming election: One side gave you $36 billion to save your pensions. The other side was against that. One side put the most pro-union general counsel ever at the head of the NLRB. The other side will fire her, and then appoint a bunch of right-wing judges who will rule the NLRB unconstitutional. One side will try to pass the PRO Act to improve America’s labor laws. The other side will oppose the PRO Act and support every last legal and regulatory measure to drain your union of its power and make it harder to organize new workers.
Hmm. Hmm. Choices, choices.
The most plausible theory of the Teamsters’ weird endorsement fiasco is this: The union’s membership has a lot of Trump supporters, plus O’Brien himself is a bit of the macho-esque type of guy who might think Trump is sort of cool, plus—before Biden dropped out of the race—it looked like Trump was going to win. This combination of factors may have been enticing enough to convince O’Brien that he could pave the way for a plausible case to endorse Trump, which would then allow him to accrue power as the lone major union leader that Trump liked when he went back to the White House. O’Brien could then use his uniquely positive relationship with Trump to shield the Teamsters from the bad things the Republicans would do, and make himself labor’s biggest political player at the same time.
Let us count the flaws in this plan. First, Biden dropping out has reset the entire race, making the Democrats the betting favorite once again. But by the time that happened, O’Brien had already pissed off the Democrats so much with his RNC speech and general refusal to endorse that they froze him out of the DNC, instead putting a group of Teamsters members on stage to drive home the point that the Democrats saved their pensions. As soon as the Teamsters International announced they would not endorse anyone this week, Teamsters locals, councils, and caucuses across the nation began quickly announcing their own endorsements of the Harris-Walz ticket. Those endorsements piled up so fast that the Harris campaign was able to blast out their own press release saying that they add up to a total of 1 million Teamsters—the vast majority of the union’s total membership. (The Trump campaign issued its own press release bragging about the non-endorsement, thereby completing the full spectrum of political uselessness.)
Now, Sean O’Brien has pissed off the Democratic Party. He has pissed off the Harris campaign. He has pissed off the rest of the labor movement, and his union allies. He has pissed off the most politically astute segment of his own membership. He looks weak, since his own locals staged a backlash against him. O’Brien’s actions have led to an internal opposition campaign to his reelection. If the Democrats win, he will have to try to rebuild all of these bridges that have been burned. And—the cherry on top—if the Republicans win, organized labor will be fucked anyhow! Being Trump’s buddy is not going to save you from the end of the NLRB and a return to pre-New Deal hostility to all forms of union power.
Smoothly done, sir. Canny maneuvering.
I do not want to end on such a snide note. Let’s imagine that O’Brien did this all in good faith—that he truly felt that his members did not support one side or the other. It would be a positive step for union democracy if every major union had a set internal processes to solicit all members to vote on presidential endorsements every four years, and followed their will. But such a democratic process does not erase the need for leadership. A true union leader, who understands the stakes of this election, must stand up and tell his members: “Hey, if Trump is elected, unions, the working class, women, and your immigrant brothers and sisters are going to be fucked in the following ways.” The Teamsters’ process obviously did not play out like that. Perhaps we can all do better four years from now. Assuming the whole democracy thing still exists.
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Mass Deportations Would Harm Immigrants and the Country
The mass deportations promised by Project 2025 would sweep away the dreams of DACA recipients like me and cause a logistical disaster, taking decades and costing billions.
Aug 12, 2024
There’s an image that’s stayed with me for weeks: A sea of people holding up “Mass Deportation Now” signs at the Republican National Convention.
Since then, I’ve been plagued with nightmares of mass raids by the military and police across the country. I see millions of families being torn apart, including families with citizen children. And I see DACA recipients—like me—carried away from the only life we’ve ever known.
Mass deportation wasn’t just a rallying cry at the GOP convention. It’s a key plank of Project 2025, a radical document written by white nationalists listing conservative policy priorities for the next administration.
Imagine your friends, neighbors, colleagues, peers, and caretakers being dragged away from their homes.
And it would be a disaster—not just for immigrants, but for our whole country.
I moved to the United States when I was six. Until my teenage years, I didn’t know I was undocumented—I only knew I was from the Philippines. I grew up in Chicago with my twin brother. Our parents worked hard, volunteered at my elementary school, and ensured we always had food on the table. They raised us to do well and be good people.
But when my twin and I learned that we were undocumented, we realized that living our dreams was going to be complicated—on top of the lasting fear of being deported.
Everything changed right before I entered high school in 2012: The Obama administration announced the Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA. The program was designed to protect young people like my twin and me who arrived in the U.S. at a young age with limited or no knowledge of our life before. We’re two of the 600,000 DACA recipients today.
DACA opened many doors for us. It’s allowed to drive, attend college, and have jobs. And we’re temporarily exempt from deportation, a status we have to renew every two years.
DACA helped me set my sights high on my studies and career. Although I couldn’t apply for federal aid, with DACA I became eligible for a program called QuestBridge that granted me a full-ride scholarship to college. Today I work in public policy in the nation’s capital, with dreams of furthering my career through graduate school.
But if hardliners eliminate DACA and carry out their mass deportations, those dreams could be swept away. And it would be ugly—mass deportation would be a logistical disaster, taking decades and costing billions.
Imagine your friends, neighbors, colleagues, peers, and caretakers being dragged away from their homes. For me, it would mean being forced back to the Philippines, a place I haven’t seen in two decades. My partner, my friends, my work—all I’ve ever known is here, in the country I call home.
This country would suffer, too.
An estimated 11 million undocumented people live here. We’re doctors, chefs, librarians, construction workers, lawyers, drivers, scientists, and business owners. We fill labor shortages and help keep inflation down. We contribute nearly $100 billion each year to federal, state, and local taxes.
Fear-mongering politicians want you to believe we’re criminals, or that we’re voting illegally. But again and again, studies find that immigrants commit many fewer crimes than U.S.-born Americans. And though some of us have been long-time residents of this country, we cannot vote in state or federal elections.
Despite all the divisive rhetoric, the American people agree with immigration advocates: Our country needs to offer immigrants a path to legalization and citizenship. According to a Gallup poll last year, 68% of Americans support this.
My dark dreams of mass deportations are, thankfully, just nightmares for now. And my dreams of a secure future for my family and all people in this country outweigh my fears. We must do everything possible to keep all families together.
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