The crook, the chief, his wife and her lover: an family dynasty unravels
Prominent Christian Jerry Falwell Jr paved the way for Donald Trump’s 2016 election win, but his evangelical dynasty has been humbled over his wife’s affair.
On Donald Trump’s path to the presidency, Jerry Falwell Jr provided one of his key endorsements. The announcement in January 2016 on the eve of the Iowa caucus, the first big test of Trump’s bid for the White House shocked many.
Why had a prominent evangelical, son of the televangelist and Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell — who led Ronald Reagan’s so-called Moral Majority — thrown his weight behind a thrice-married Manhattan playboy?
Support for Falwell paved the way for Trump’s victory, providing a permission slip for millions of evangelicals to back the unorthodox reality TV star.
The rationale behind that fateful step became clearer last week, as revelations about the 58-year-old Falwell’s private life spilt into public view and he stepped down as president of Liberty University, the Christian powerhouse founded by his father in Virginia.
It is a typically Trumpian tale of demimonde skulduggery, involving an affair between Falwell’s wife Becki, 55, and hotel “pool boy” Giancarlo Granda, the intervention of Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, a seedy hostel in Miami Beach and the humbling of an evangelical dynasty.
It began in 2012, when Granda, then 20, met the Falwells while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel. Granda entered into an affair, which he has revealed involved him having sex with Becki while Jerry Falwell looked on.
Granda said the encounters took place at hotels in Miami and New York, and at the Falwells’ home in Virginia.
The trio even went into business together, buying and running the Miami Hostel in the city’s South Beach neighbourhood, that became known as gay-friendly budget accommodation for Miami’s party crowd, renting beds for as little as $US15 ($20) a night.
It was in the Miami Hostel that the seeds of Falwell’s recent downfall were sown. The project soured and Jesus Fernandez Sr and Jesus Fernandez Jr — a father-and-son property duo who helped broker the deal — ended up suing Falwell.
By 2015 the lawsuit had descended into a fight over compromising photos that revealed the Falwells — whose Liberty University prohibited short skirts, co-ed dorm visits and sex outside “biblically ordained” marriage for its students — were not practising what they preached. Either Granda or one of the Fernandezes is thought to have had possession of the photos.
At this point Cohen, since jailed for tax fraud, entered the fray. He and Falwell knew each other because Trump had given a speech at Liberty University, part of a wider strategy of connecting with key interest groups as he explored a run for the presidency.
“There’s a bunch of photographs, personal photographs,” Cohen said in a recorded phone call with comedian Tom Arnold, describing the Falwells as “kinky”. Without saying who had them, he went on: “I was going to pay him, and I was going to get the negatives and do an agreement where they turn over all the technology that has the photographs or anything like that, any copies.”
Cohen said the transaction never happened, but that he obtained one of the photos in the process. The Falwells say they were unaware of Cohen acting on their behalf.
By 2016 Trump and senator Ted Cruz were running neck and neck in Iowa, the crucial first presidential primary poll in the contest for the Republican nomination.
Cruz was running a pro-evangelical “values” campaign. His father, a pastor, had been wooing Falwell, but days before the caucus, Falwell endorsed Trump instead, calling him “a successful executive and entrepreneur, a wonderful father and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness again”.
According to a person “close to” Falwell, Cohen had simply contacted him and asked that he back Trump.
Cruz edged to victory in Iowa, but the momentum was behind Trump and his dominant performance among evangelical voters continues to this day. About 80 per cent of evangelicals support him and will represent a key voting bloc in the November presidential election.
After his endorsement of Trump, Falwell has remained a confidant of the President, who reportedly wanted to make him education secretary.
In a statement last week, he acknowledged the affair with Granda but denied taking part and claimed he was going public because the former pool boy was “threatening to publicly reveal this secret relationship with Becki and to deliberately embarrass my wife, family, and Liberty University unless we agreed to pay him substantial monies”. Granda has in turn denied this allegation of extortion.
Falwell insisted he had done his best to “respectfully unravel this Fatal Attraction-type situation to protect our family and the university”. In this he appears to have failed.
THE SUNDAY TIMES
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