Todd Chrisley owes $755,000 because a federal jury in Georgia found him liable in a civil defamation case brought by Amy Doherty-Heinze, an investigator with the Georgia Department of Revenue. The $755,000 is the amount of the original judgment. It is not a confirmed current balance, because statutory interest has been accruing since the judgment was entered and public reporting does not show how much, if any, has been collected.
What the $755,000 is made of
The judgment was entered in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. It breaks down into three awards, as set out in the court’s November 2025 amended order:
| Award | Amount | What it represents |
|---|---|---|
| Compensatory damages | $350,000 | Money the jury awarded to compensate the plaintiff for the harm the statements caused |
| Punitive damages | $170,000 | Additional damages the jury awarded beyond compensation |
| Litigation expenses | $235,000 | Costs the judgment assigns to the plaintiff’s litigation |
| Total judgment | $755,000 | Entered April 4, 2024; the figure in the headline |
These are case-specific figures for this one judgment. They are not comparable to any other defamation award, and they do not describe what Chrisley has paid.
What the case was about
Doherty-Heinze had a limited role in the state’s investigation of the Chrisleys’ taxes. She sued after Chrisley allegedly made more than 20 defamatory statements about her in 2020 and 2021 on Instagram, Facebook, and his Chrisley Confessions podcast. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s account of the complaint, he accused her of corruption, of improperly using the Georgia Crime Information Center, of destroying evidence, and of taking a taxpayer-funded Disney World trip. These are the plaintiff’s allegations as reported in the case coverage and court record. They were not established as fact by the verdict.
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Chrisley’s position, as the AJC summarized his court filings, was that the statements were true or substantially true, were made in good faith, and repeated information he had obtained from Georgia Department of Revenue personnel and from open-records documents. The plaintiff’s attorney, Nicole Jennings Wade, told the AJC that jurors found the statements false and defamatory, although they did not find liability on one of the claims.
Coverage differs on the legal label for the verdict. Contemporary reports describe the jury finding Chrisley liable for slander. WSB-TV later reported that the jury found one count of libel and one count of slander. Both descriptions point to a defamation verdict; the libel-and-slander detail is the more specific account.
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This civil case was separate from the federal criminal tax and bank-fraud case against the Chrisleys. Doherty-Heinze was not a party to the criminal proceedings.
Timeline of the judgment
- April 4, 2024: The jury returned its verdict and the court entered a judgment totaling $755,000.
- June 6, 2024: The court granted Chrisley’s motion to voluntarily dismiss his appeal, so the judgment was not reversed on appeal.
- November 12, 2024: The court issued and mailed a writ of execution, as recounted in the later order.
- November 20, 2025: The court granted Doherty-Heinze’s motion to amend the judgment to state expressly that post-judgment interest accrues under 28 U.S.C. § 1961 from April 4, 2024. The order also recorded that she had not acted on the earlier writ and intended to domesticate the judgment in Tennessee, where the Chrisleys live.
Has Chrisley paid, and how much is owed now?
Public reporting and the court order do not establish whether Doherty-Heinze has collected any of the judgment, or what the balance is today. Two things are clear from the record. First, the $755,000 is the principal figure entered in 2024. Second, federal post-judgment interest runs on that amount from April 4, 2024 under the statute the November 2025 order cites, so the total owed rises over time and cannot be read off the headline figure. Calculating a current payoff requires the applicable federal rate for each period and the payment history, which only the docket or the parties can supply.
To verify the current status, the most reliable route is the case docket in the Northern District of Georgia, accessible through PACER. Docket entries show any writs, satisfactions of judgment, or domestication filings in Tennessee.
What the 2026 developments do and do not change
The Chrisleys’ later legal news involves different proceedings. In June 2026, the Associated Press reported that Todd and Julie Chrisley had been released after presidential pardons, and that they had filed a separate malpractice suit against their former defense lawyers. Neither development is reported as affecting the Doherty-Heinze judgment. A pardon covers federal criminal convictions; it is not described in the reporting as wiping out a private civil judgment. The malpractice suit is a claim against former counsel, not an appeal of the defamation verdict.
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For readers who want a single answer: the defamation judgment against Chrisley stands, its appeal was dropped in 2024, and the amount still owed depends on payments and interest that the public record does not show.
Chrisley’s current counsel has not been quoted publicly in the reporting on the verdict. The defense position described above comes from the AJC’s summary of his earlier filings.
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What the plaintiff’s side has said
Jennings Wade told the AJC: “This wasn’t about the money. She wanted a jury to say ‘We believe you.’ And they did.” She also said her client was “thrilled because this has been hanging over her head for four years now – all these lies,” and described Doherty-Heinze as “absolutely thrilled to be vindicated.”
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