More than a year after President Donald Trump's pardon freed them from prison and erased their criminal convictions, Todd and Julie Chrisley are facing a fresh financial headache: a federal tax lien totaling more than $1.5 million. The Internal Revenue Service filed the lien in Davidson County, Tennessee, on August 19, 2026, targeting unpaid tax assessments from 2021 and 2022.
According to WSB-TV, the lien totals $1,571,452 and breaks down into two separate assessments: $142,410.72 for the tax period ending December 31, 2021, and $1,429,041.89 for the period ending December 31, 2022, both figures reported per Page Six. The station notes that the lien is unrelated to the convictions covered by Trump's pardon, instead concerning alleged unpaid federal tax obligations assessed after the years examined in the couple's 2022 criminal case.
That legal distinction matters. Trump pardoned Todd and Julie Chrisley in May 2025, wiping away their convictions for bank fraud and tax evasion and ending the prison sentences they had been serving, per the same account. But a presidential pardon reaches only federal criminal offenses and penalties — it does not touch civil tax liabilities, which remain legally enforceable by the IRS under Article II of the Constitution, according to JURIST.
What a Federal Tax Lien Actually Does
A Notice of Federal Tax Lien isn't a new criminal charge — it's an administrative tool. The Internal Revenue Service states that such a filing is a public notice that secures the government's legal claim against all of a taxpayer's current and future personal and real property when assessed tax debts go unpaid. In practical terms, it alerts creditors and establishes federal priority over the Chrisleys' assets.
The House Judiciary Committee's analysis, reported by IBTimes UK, found that Trump's pardon wiped away $17.8 million in court-ordered criminal restitution owed to banks as part of the couple's 2022 conviction, but that separate civil tax liabilities owed to the federal government survived the clemency. The new $1.57 million lien covers entirely different tax years than those examined during the original criminal trial.
A Case Years in the Making
The roots of the Chrisleys' legal troubles stretch back nearly a decade. Todd and Julie Chrisley were federally indicted in 2019 on allegations that they submitted false documents to banks while seeking loans. Prosecutors alleged the couple obtained loans using fraudulent financial information and failed to properly report income earned through their show, Chrisley Knows Best, while the family lived in metro Atlanta's northern suburbs.
Channel 2 Action News began investigating the family in 2017, and that reporting found Todd Chrisley had likely evaded Georgia state income taxes for several years. By 2018, the family owed nearly $800,000 in state tax liens. A federal jury found Todd and Julie Chrisley guilty of bank fraud and tax evasion in 2022, and Todd was sentenced to 12 years in prison while Julie received seven years. The couple reported to federal prison facilities in Florida in January 2023, with Todd serving his sentence at Federal Prison Camp Pensacola and Julie incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky, according to uInterview.
During the 2022 trial, prosecutors detailed how Todd Chrisley filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2012 to discharge more than $20 million in debt after fraudulently obtaining over $36 million in bank loans, uInterview reports — a pattern of borrowing and insolvency that stretched back over a decade before the family's reality television fame peaked.
Georgia's Mixed Record on Tax Claims
The Chrisleys' battles with tax authorities have not always gone against them. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in October 2019 that the Georgia Department of Revenue settled a $2.1 million state tax evasion claim against the couple for under $150,000, after determining they had actually overpaid state taxes during four of the eight years audited between 2008 and 2016.
Then, in January 2024, Todd and Julie Chrisley received a $1 million civil settlement from the State of Georgia after suing the former director of the Georgia Department of Revenue's special investigations unit, whom they accused of improperly sharing their private tax records, as reported by FOX 5 Atlanta.
Savannah Chrisley's Public Campaign
The couple's daughter, Savannah Chrisley, became their most visible public advocate throughout their imprisonment. She attended events in Washington pushing for their release and delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July 2024, publicly accusing federal prosecutors of targeting her parents over their conservative political beliefs, according to WSB-TV's earlier coverage. She has said the fight for justice is far from over.
Since their release, the family has resumed income-generating media work, including Lifetime's eight-episode docuseries The Chrisleys: Back to Reality, which premiered in September 2025 and chronicled the couple's lives following their time in federal custody. The Chrisleys have also kept Atlanta courts busy on other fronts: in June, Todd and Julie filed a $25 million malpractice suit against their former defense attorneys and the law firm Balch & Bingham, claiming trial counsel botched the presentation of financial records that led to their 2022 convictions.
As of Friday afternoon, neither Todd nor Julie Chrisley had publicly responded to the reported lien.
