Quote:The posting — which was quickly withdrawn — drew a sharp backlash and charges of hypocrisy because the evangelical university that he leads prohibits students from having sexual relations outside of a “biblically-ordained” marriage and consuming media with lewd lyrics, sexual content and nudity. The university’s policy also counsels “appropriateness” and “modesty” in how students must dress.

“I’ve apologized to everybody,” Falwell said in an interview on the Morningline show on WLNI 105.9FM, a local radio station in Lynchburg, Va., Falwell’s home town and that of the Liberty campus. “And I’ve promised my kids I’m going to try to be — I’m gonna try to be a good boy from here on out.”


Falwell described the woman in the photo as his “wife’s assistant.” On his Instagram account, Falwell tagged a picture of the woman as Kathleen Stone, who lists on her Facebook account that she works for Liberty University. A university spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“She’s a sweetheart and I should never have put it up and embarrassed her,” Falwell said.

Falwell described the scene leading up to the photo. “She’s pregnant so she couldn’t get her — she couldn’t get her pants up,” he said. “And I was like, trying to like — my — I had on pair of jeans that I hadn’t worn in a long time so I couldn’t get mine zipped either. And so — and so — I just put my belly — I just put my belly out like hers.”

The photo of Falwell appeared to be a parody of the comedy TV show “Trailer Park Boys.” The website Pulpit & Pen also published a video, set to the theme music of the show, that shows Falwell and other yacht guests in costume. The video appears to have been taken by someone on the yacht.

Asked about the reference to the TV show during the interview on Wednesday, Falwell demurred. “Whatever,” he said. “It was a costume party on a — we were on vacation. And, anyway, long story short it was just in good fun. That’s it.”

(08-08-2020, 03:09 PM)Benton Wrote: Personally, I find it less appalling that he took a weird photo with a bare bellied employee and more appalling that a Christian leader took the photo on his yacht.

Every time a guy on a yacht tells people on minimum wage they need to send him more money to get closer to Christ, that guy moves a little further from the word.

(08-08-2020, 09:22 PM)GMDino Wrote: So I don't know if it was HIS Yacht or not.  In fact I think the way he described it was a bit shady.

(08-10-2020, 10:18 AM)michaelsean Wrote: Doesn't it look like someone else's hand around her? I can't tell why, but it looks really odd. (I'm not suggesting it's something photoshopped or something, just looks weird.)

(08-10-2020, 10:54 AM)GMDino Wrote: Everything Falwell is in looks weird. 

But, no he posted it and it is indeed just him and his wife assistant (or someone who works for the college...depends on the version of the story he tells.  

(08-10-2020, 11:14 AM)michaelsean Wrote: I get that it's real, I just can't figure out why his hand around her looks so odd to me.

(08-10-2020, 11:14 AM)michaelsean Wrote: I get that it's real, I just can't figure out why his hand around her looks so odd to me.

Quote:Suspended Liberty University leader Jerry Falwell Jr. confirmed to Washington Examiner columnist Paul Bedard late Sunday that his wife, Becki Falwell, had an affair with a young man they befriended and went into business with in Florida eight years ago. In a long statement, Falwell said he and his wife "forgave each other" — he suggested he had also "important smaller things" to atone for, quoting a Bible verse about visual adultery — and had decided to come forward because his wife's former lover had been extorting them for "huge amounts of monies" to stay quiet. "I'm just tired of it," Falwell told Bedard.

Falwell said the young man — Giancarlo Granda — had created a "'fatal attraction' type situation," referring to a famous 1987 movie in which a jilted extramarital lover boiled a pet rabbit, among other acts of retaliatory intimidation. Granda, 21 at the time of the affair, told the Examiner in an email that "any allegation of extortion" is false, "defamatory, and belied by clear documentary evidence," adding that the attempt by the Falwells "to sandbag me" with this "last-minute story" just "reeks of desperation," and "the WHOLE truth will come out."


The salacious nature of the relationship between the Falwells and Granda emerged when Michael Cohen, the former fixer and lawyer for President Trump, told comedian Tom Arnold in a secretly taped conversation that he had destroyed risqué "personal" photographs involving the "pool boy" on behalf of Falwell weeks before Falwell unexpectedly endorsed Trump for president.


Falwell said Sunday he "was not involved" in his wife's "inappropriate personal relationship" with Granda, and mentioned "fantastic" and "prurient, untrue aspects" of the relationship "based on the individual's misrepresentations."



Liberty University, a conservative evangelical Christian college founded by Jerry Falwell Sr., confirmed Friday that Falwell has been placed on indefinite paid suspension while the university investigates "various rumors and claims" about him and decides if he will be fired. He makes about $1 million a year as president of Liberty University, The News & Advance reports.




Falwell, 58, has been on leave since apologizing for posting (then deleting) a photo of himself with his arm around a woman, both their pants partially unzipped, at a "Trailer Park Boys" costume party on a 164-foot, six-bedroom yacht owned by NASCAR mogul Rick Hendrick. Falwell's family has reportedly been taking family vacations on the yacht since Liberty University signed a multi-million-dollar sponsorship deal with Hendrick Motorsports. 

Quote:Business partner of Falwells says affair with evangelical power couple spanned seven years

‘IDEAL TARGET’: Giancarlo Granda, who says he had a years-long sexual relationship with the Falwells that began when he was 20, said he now believes the Falwells preyed upon him. “Whether it was immaturity, naïveté, instability, or a combination thereof, it was this ‘mindset’ that the Falwells likely detected in deciding that I was the ideal target for their sexual escapades,” he said. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst


Giancarlo Granda says his sexual relationship with the Falwells began when he was 20. He says he had sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell Jr, head of Liberty University and a staunch supporter of President Trump, looked on.
By ARAM ROSTON
 
Filed Aug. 24, 2020, 4 p.m. GMT
WASHINGTON – In a claim likely to intensify the controversy surrounding one of the most influential figures in the American Christian conservative movement, a business partner of Jerry Falwell Jr has come forward to say he had a years-long sexual relationship involving Falwell’s wife and the evangelical leader.

Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.

Granda showed Reuters emails, text messages and other evidence that he says demonstrate the sexual nature of his relationship with the couple, who have been married since 1987. “Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room,” Granda said in an interview. Now 29, he described the liaisons as frequent – “multiple times per year” – and said the encounters took place at hotels in Miami and New York, and at the Falwells’ home in Virginia.

His friendship with the Falwells eventually soured, Granda told Reuters, in part because he wanted to dissolve his ties with the couple and fell into a business dispute with them.

Granda first emerged as a figure in the Falwells’ circle two years ago, when BuzzFeed News reported that the couple had befriended Granda and gone into business with him, buying a Miami Beach youth hostel in 2013. At the time of the BuzzFeed article, a representative of the Falwell family said Granda was “offered a share” in Alton Hostel LLC because Granda lived in Miami and would act as a manager of the youth hostel. Corporate records show that Granda currently has a stake in that venture.

Becki Falwell did not respond to emails or phone and text messages from Reuters. After Reuters presented its initial reporting early last week to the Falwells, a lawyer for Jerry Falwell, Michael Bowe, said the evangelical leader “categorically denies everything you indicated you intend to publish about him.”

STAUNCH SUPPORTER: Jerry Falwell Jr’s decision to endorse Donald Trump for the presidency in 2016 helped swing evangelical Christians toward Trump. REUTERS/Scott Morgan
On Sunday night, however, as Reuters was preparing to publish this article, Jerry Falwell issued a statement to the Washington Examiner in which he said that his wife had had an affair with Granda and that Granda had been trying to extort money from the couple over the matter. Granda denies any such intent, saying he was seeking to negotiate a buyout from a business arrangement he says he had with the couple.

Falwell’s statement Sunday to the Examiner said nothing about Granda’s account alleging that the evangelical leader had his own role in the affair, and Falwell didn’t address questions from Reuters about it. In the statement quoted by the Examiner, Falwell said that “Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with this person, something in which I was not involved.”
News of the entanglement could pose a fresh threat to the influence of Jerry Falwell, a towering figure in the U.S. evangelical political movement. His 2016 endorsement of Donald Trump helped the twice-divorced New Yorker win the Republican nomination for president.

Falwell, 58, took an indefinite leave of absence earlier this month from Liberty University, the Christian school he has run since 2007. The leave, announced in a terse statement from the school’s board of trustees, came days after Falwell posted, then deleted, an Instagram photo of himself with his pants unzipped, standing with his arm around a young woman whose pants were also partly undone. Falwell later told a local radio station that the picture was meant as a good-natured joke.

FALWELL POST: The photo on Instagram that was posted, then quickly deleted. Falwell later explained that the post was meant as a joke and the woman was his wife’s pregnant assistant.
Becki Falwell, 53, is a political figure in her own right. She served on the advisory board of the group Women for Trump, which advocates for the president’s reelection campaign. She also spoke as part of a panel with her husband and Donald Trump Jr at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, the signature annual gathering of conservatives. Jerry Falwell and others refer to her as “the first lady of Liberty University.”

The university, based in Lynchburg, Virginia, was founded in 1971 by Falwell’s televangelist father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell. The younger Falwell took over in 2007. Today, the university boasts an online and on-campus enrollment that exceeds 100,000 students and holds those who attend to an exacting honor code. “Sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University,” the code reads.

The material Granda showed Reuters includes screenshots from what Granda said was a FaceTime conversation he had with the Falwells in 2019. During that call, Granda said, Becki was naked as the two discussed their relationship while Jerry peeked from behind a door. Reuters was able to verify Granda’s description of the screenshots. 

Granda also shared an audio recording that he says captures a conversation he had with the Falwells in 2018. In it, Becky complained about Granda describing his relationships with other people: “He’s like telling me every time he hooks up with people. Like I don’t have feelings or something.” Jerry then chimed in: “You’re going to make her jealous.” “I’m not trying to do that,” Granda replied.

Earlier texts show a friendly and romantic dynamic between Granda and Becki Falwell. One 2012 text message, which Granda said came from Becki, read in part: “Right now I am just missing you like crazy .... Have you had this effect on all of your lady friends?”


Last year, Becki Falwell talked about the Trumps, family values and abortion during a guest appearance on the Trump campaign show Real News Insights.

Other more recent text messages, such as an exchange from this June that Granda provided to Reuters, show Granda growing angry and frustrated as his relationship with the Falwells frayed.

“Since you’re okay with ruining my life, I am going to take the kamikaze route,” Granda wrote to Jerry Falwell. “It really is a shame because I wanted to reach a peaceful resolution and just move on with our lives but if conflict is what you want, then so be it.”

1. [url=https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tips/][/url]
   

In the same message string, Falwell replied: “You should by now understand that I will not be extorted. I have always treated you fairly and been restrained in response to your threats because I did not wish to ruin your life. Going forward, stop contacting me and my family.”


Granda said that while he entered into the sexual relationship with the Falwells willingly, today he feels the couple preyed upon him. “Whether it was immaturity, naïveté, instability, or a combination thereof, it was this ‘mindset’ that the Falwells likely detected in deciding that I was the ideal target for their sexual escapades,” Granda said.

In a statement released Friday, before news of the relationship with Granda became public, Liberty University said its “decision whether or not to retain Falwell as president has not yet been made.” Its board of trustees, the statement read, “requested prayer and patience as they seek the Lord’s will and also seek additional information for assessment.”

POWER COUPLE: Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr and his wife, Becki Falwell, join U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, in a prayer after the 2019  commencement ceremonies at Liberty. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

(08-24-2020, 02:41 PM)samhain Wrote: There's a popular alt-right insult.  I don't think we're permitted to use it here.  The Trumpers and fashy-types have used it as a go-to for years.  It's generally used to denigrate liberals and more often conservatives who aren't Trumpy or anti-non-white people enough to pass the muster in the modern Nazi-lite movement that the GOP finds itself in the grip of.  

It rhymes with duck.

It's literal meaning describes Jerry Jr. here with absolute accuracy.  How will Jerry ever be alpha enough to remain in the MAGA movement while displaying such beta tendencies?

The money used to hose down giancarlo and the other young friend of the Falwells was intertwined or came from Liberty U, a nonprofit Jerry controlled. That's trouble with the IRS because cucking may be righteous or godly but it's not an IRS approved charitable activity.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 24, 2020