By Mark Gray
6:00am PST, Dec 12, 2023
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After 11 months in prison, Todd Chrisley is speaking up. In January 2023, Todd Chrisley began serving a 12 year prison sentence for bank fraud and tax evasion while his wife, Julie Chrisley, began her seven year sentence for the same crimes; both also got another 16 months of probation. Since then, the two have been speaking via their children or "sources" within their inner circle. However, Todd himself is now speaking out. On the NewsNation show, "Cuomo," the "Chrisley Knows Best" star spoke with Brian Entin through a lawyer (Brian asked the questions, and the lawyer relayed them to Todd). In the chat, Todd said he fears for his safety and chastised conditions within the prison walls…
Click through to read — in his own words — what prison life is like…
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Todd Chrisley said of prison food, "The only food that I eat is what I make that I buy from the commissary. It is so disgustingly filthy. The food is literally, I'm not exaggerating this…the food is dated, it's out of date, at minimum a year. It's a year past expiration."
The prison denies this.
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"There was a photograph taken of me while I was sleeping and sent to my daughter, asking for $2,600 a month for my protection," Todd Chrisley said, via his lawyer.
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Todd Chrisley believes the prison is "literally starving these men to death here. These men are getting…I don't know that they're getting, 1000 calories a day."
For Todd, he said thinks he's been targeted by the warden, believing she's "trying to break me by cutting down what you can buy in commissary."
"So, before she came here you could buy 12 packs of tuna a week and she cut it down to six and then it went from six to three. She had not given a reason," Todd claimed. "When I asked her about it, she said, 'Commissary is a privilege, not a right.'"
For his part, the former reality TV star has a limited diet.
"I eat tuna, I eat peanut butter. That's where I get protein. I eat like a pasta salad that I make, pasta that I get in commissary. And then I start over again doing the same thing the next week," he said.
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The conditions within the walls, Todd Chrisley says, are unsanitary, at best.
"You've got rats, you've got squirrels in the storage facility where the food is," he alleged. "They just covered it up with plastic and tore the ceiling out because of all the black mold and found a dead cat in the ceiling that dropped down on top of the food."
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Todd Chrisley believes prison officials are keeping outsiders away as much as possible, which is why the NewsNation interview didn't happen in person.
"They don't want you in here where you can see what's really going on," Todd said.
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Todd Chrisley has been keeping touch with his wife, Julie Chrisley via email. Not being able to see Julie for nearly a year has been "devastating," he said.
While in prison, the couple's daughter Savannah has been using her platform and podcast to shine light on her parents' prison struggles.
"[Julie] and I email four or five times a day, but they will hold my emails and hold them on her end as well as a way of punishment to us because of what Savannah is doing," he alleged. "So if I write her an email today, if I write her three or four, if I work out and then go to the computer and send all my kids an email every morning — their current emails just say, 'I love you, just stay strong, God's got us' — whatever we say, and anyone else's emails will go through within two hours. You may not get mine for five days later."
He added, "God has a greater purpose. I know he's got a greater plan, and I'm not going to let the federal government break my faith."
