Todd Chrisley is not holding back when it comes to his 28-month stay in prison.
Todd, 56, appeared on the Tuesday, July 1, episode of daughter Savannah Chrisley’s “Unlocked” podcast alongside wife Julie Chrisley, which they recorded three weeks following their May 28 prison release.
When Savannah asked her dad whether it felt “weird” returning to the podcast world after being incarcerated, he had quite the response.
“I feel like I did [a podcast] for 28 months with all the people that [were] around me,” Todd said, confirming Savannah’s account that he “ran that up in there,” referring to prison. “They called me Teflon Todd.”
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Todd and Julie, 52, were convicted on federal charges of tax evasion, bank and wire fraud and conspiracy in June 2022. They were eventually sentenced to a combined 19 years in prison, with Todd being placed at FPC Pensacola in January 2023 while Julie started her sentence that same month in Kentucky.
President Donald Trump announced in May that he had pardoned Todd and Julie, and they were subsequently released from prison.
Keep scrolling to see what Todd said about his prison stay:
How He Coped
“In my head, I was still free,” Todd explained. “I did not take up residence there. I was in prison, prison was not in me.”
Todd said he made “great friends” during his time behind bars and used faith to help him get through.
“I prayed, I read my Bible, I worked out, I walked,” he said. “I wreaked havoc on anyone that was mistreating somebody else.”
Recalling His 1st Night
Initially, Todd said that he “didn’t have any fear,” but the “hard part” came at night.
“It didn’t set in with me until that evening that I realized that I wasn’t going to see [Julie] again,” he recalled. “That was hard, that first night, and I was so angry with God. I remember when the lights went out, I laid there and I cried and I said, ‘God why have you forsaken me? What did I do in my life that warrants this?’”
He claimed that God then came to him in a dream.
“[He] said, ‘I have planted you where I need you and when you leave, they will rise,’” Todd recalled.
Why He Didn’t Work
“I did not work, I did not give them any labor,” Todd said, noting that he only “prayed for their demise” while in the prison chapel.
Elsewhere in the podcast episode, Todd referred to FPC Pensacola as “a bad, busted summer camp.”
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Meeting His Best Friend in Prison
When Todd got to his room on the first day, he said there was “all this stuff laying on my bed,” including clothes and a shaving kit.
“I had read that you [were] going to be taking nothing for free because then you got to give something up, and I’m too old to be fighting all these people off,” the reality TV alum recalled, noting that he received the items from a man named Jig.
Jig explained that a “good samaritan” sent word to make sure Todd was taken care of in prison.
“I said, ‘Well, I can take care of myself.’ He said, ‘I don’t have no doubt. … But I still got to do what I got to do,’” Todd added. “From that point forward, Jig and I became best buddies.”
Behind Bars With Rick Singer
Both Todd and Singer — the mastermind behind the infamous college admissions scandal — were both at FPC Pensacola at the same time. However, they didn’t get along. (Todd did not refer to Singer by name, calling only “the college admissions guy.”)
Singer was “talking smack” about Savannah, according to Todd, which led to some words between the two.
“He was talking s*** about Savannah, because that’s when she had already started, you know, pulling the Barbara Walters and exposing everything in the [Bureau of Prisons]. He started talking smack,” Todd said. “I said, ‘I will rip your head off and s*** down your neck if you talk about my child again.’ And I meant what I said.”
