Todd Chrisley is sued for defamation by Georgia tax official who worked on his ... trends now
Todd Chrisley has been hit with a federal defamation lawsuit for allegedly waging a campaign of harassment that amounted to a 'vendetta' against a Georgia tax official who worked on his case, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The beleaguered reality TV star and his wife Julie, 49, are currently facing prison terms of 12 and seven years respectively, having been found guilty of tax evasion and multiple fraudulent loan claims totaling $30million.
Now, DailyMail.com has learned that Chrisley, 53, was slapped with the defamation lawsuit on Monday, November 21 - the very day he was sentenced.
The complaint was filed by former Georgia Department of Revenue (GDOR) Special Agent Amy Doherty-Heinze, who claims Chrisley 'falsely and maliciously accused' her of criminal conduct on his podcast and social media after the agency began investigating him.
Former Georgia Department of Revenue (GDOR) Special Agent Amy Doherty-Heinze, pictured right, has launched a federal defamation lawsuit against Todd Chrisley, accusing him of waging a campaign of harassment against her on social media and on his podcast
The reality TV star, 53, and his wife Julie, 49, were sentenced to a combined prison time of 19 years last month after being convicted on multiple counts of tax evasion and fraud
A source told DailyMail.com: 'He had managed to dodge being served until then, but they finally got him at Atlanta's Federal Courthouse when he showed up for sentencing.'
The complaint obtained by DailyMail.com accuses Chrisley of 'innumerable' false and defamatory statements against Special Agent Amy Doherty-Heinze in 'an explicit effort' to have her Georgia Peace Officer Standard and Training Council (POST) certificate revoked.
It is the second suit filed by Doherty-Heinze whose first filing is still pending and was made earlier this year after a demand that Chrisley retract a host of defamatory statements fell on deaf ears.
Among the numerous alleged falsehoods aired by Chrisley and highlighted in both suits are the claims that:
Doherty-Heinze stole thousands of dollars from the GDOR evidence room; Went to Disneyland on the taxpayers' dime; Generated false case numbers to illegally run the plates of his and family members' vehicles; Had an extramarital affair with her then boss, the Director of GDOR's Office of Special Investigations, Joshua Waites; Made a sex tape with him and one other colleague.Chrisley also claimed that during Doherty-Heinze's time as a deputy with Clayton County Sheriff's Department, before she joined GDOR, she had 'killed a young African American male,' in an incident that he described as 'preventable.'
Doherty-Heinze worked for Georgia's Department of Revenue, which pursued the tax fraud claims against him. The lawsuit, obtained by DailyMail.com, points to several Facebook posts in which Chrisley made a host of allegedly defamatory statements against the state official
In a post published on July 6, 2020, Chrisley accused Doherty-Heinze of criminal conduct and urged his friends and followers to file a complaint against her
The suit claims Chrisley falsely accused Doherty-Heinze of misconduct in an 'explicit effort' to have her Georgia Peace Officer Standard and Training Council (POST) certificate revoked
'Amy's partner had been shot and she was returning fire. The shooting was found to be entirely justified. The way Chrisley characterized it is just wrong,' a well-placed source said.
In his sworn deposition, made earlier this year and seen by DailyMail.com, Chrisley was forced to admit that he does not possess any sex tape, nor could not produce any evidence to substantiate his claims that Doherty-Heinze was 'a crook' who had acted in any way illegally.
DailyMail.com has learned that Doherty-Heinze's sister works for Disneyland and provided her with free passes to the park on the day Chrisley claimed taxpayers footed the bill.
Chrisley also publicly accused Doherty-Heinze of having an affair with her then boss, the Director of GDOR's Office of Special Investigations, Joshua Waites (pictured)
Both she and Waites vehemently deny that they had an affair or made any sex tape and Chrisley has produced no evidence to back up the claims that they did.
Georgia Department of Revenue began its investigation into the Chrisleys in 2017 though, DailyMail.com has been told, the couple had been on the department's 'radar' for considerably longer.
Almost immediately Chrisley began posting defamatory material on Instagram where he has 2.3million followers and sharing it as fact on his podcast, 'Chrisley Confessions.'
His primary targets
