Speaking out. Chrisley Knows Best stars Todd Chrisley and his wife, Julie Chrisley, broke their silence after they were found guilty of fraud charges.
“Disappointed in the verdict. An appeal is planned,” the couple’s lawyer said in a statement to Us Weekly on Tuesday, June 7.
As In Touch previously reported, the jury reached a verdict in the Chrisleys’ federal fraud case. Todd was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and tax fraud. Julie was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, tax fraud and wire fraud. They are facing up to 30 years in prison.
They were indicted in 2019 on 12 counts of tax evasion, bank and wire fraud and conspiracy. Todd denied the allegations in a lengthy statement via Instagram that August.
“It all started back in 2012, when we discovered that a trusted employee of ours had been stealing from us big time. I won’t go into details, but it involved all kinds of really bad stuff like creating phony documents forging our signatures, and threatening other employees with violence if they said anything. We even discovered that he illegally bugged our home,” he wrote at the time. “To get revenge, he took a bunch of his phony documents to the U.S. Attorney’s office and told them we had committed all kinds of financial crimes, like tax evasion and bank fraud. That got their attention all right, but once we had a chance to explain who he was and what he’d done to us, they realized it was all a bunch of nonsense and they sent him on his way.”
The businessman went on to claim that the former employee “persuaded a different set of investigators at the U.S. Attorney’s office not only to reopen the case but also to grant him immunity from prosecution for his own crimes and bring charges against us.”
“I’m telling you all this now because we have nothing to hide and have done nothing to be ashamed of,” he concluded his statement. “Not only do we know we’ve done nothing wrong, but we’ve got a ton of hard evidence and a bunch of corroborating witnesses that proves it.”
When the case went to trial in May, the couple’s attorney, Bruce Morris, doubled down on the claims that former employee, Mark Braddock, had committed without the Chrisleys’ knowledge. In exchange for his cooperation in the trial, the government granted Braddock immunity in the case.
During the trial, Braddock also made claims about an alleged affair with Todd. In his closing statements on June 2, Morris slammed Braddock’s claims as “fantasy.” He added, “I suggest to you that Mark Braddock is the very picture of reasonable doubt.”
Source: InTouch
