The evangelical leader and key Trump ally Jerry Falwell Jr confirmed on Tuesday he has resigned as president of Liberty University, following a sex scandal.
The confirmation came after conflicting reports of Falwell’s status on Monday night, in the wake of a Reuters report on a sexual relationship between him, his wife and a former business associate.
The board of the Lynchburg, Virginia, evangelical institution was meeting earlier on Tuesday regarding Falwell, who was its president for more than a decade.
Liberty University said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon that the school’s trustees “acted today to accept the resignation of Jerry Falwell, Jr. as its President and Chancellor and also accepted his resignation from its Board of Directors. All were effective immediately”.
After Falwell agreed on Monday to “immediately resign then reversing course”, the university said, he sent his resignation letter through an attorney later that night.
The university’s executive committee convened on Tuesday morning and voted to accept Falwell’s resignation, recommending that the board of trustees accept it. The full board of trustees met via videoconference on Tuesday morning and “unanimously voted” to affirm the committee’s recommendation.
“The university’s heartfelt prayers are with him and his family as he steps away from his life’s work,” the statement said.
A reporter for the News & Advance, a Lynchburg paper, quoted Falwell as saying: “It’s a relief. The quote that keeps going through my mind this morning is Martin Luther King Jr: ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last.”
Falwell agreed to resign on Monday but then withdrew his resignation, the school said late that night, capping a day of back-and-forth reports.
A little over two weeks ago, Falwell took a leave of absence from one of the largest religious colleges in the US, after he posted an Instagram photo of himself standing with his trousers unzipped and an arm around a young woman.
The university said on Monday night that since then, “additional matters came to light that made it clear that it would not be in the best interest of the university for [Falwell] to return from leave and serve as president.”
“Falwell responded by agreeing to resign immediately,” the university said, adding that he then “instructed his attorneys to not tender the letter for immediate resignation … following media reports” about his departure.
Reuters reported earlier on Monday that a young business partner said he had been in a years-long sexual relationship involving Falwell’s wife and the evangelical leader.
According to Giancarlo Granda, starting in 2012 and continuing into 2018 the relationship involved Granda having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry watched. Granda shared texts and other material he said supported his account.
As Reuters was preparing to publish, Falwell issued a statement in which he said Becki Falwell had an affair with Granda. Becki Falwell did not respond to questions. Falwell’s statement did not mention Granda’s allegation and he did not address questions about the matter.
Falwell said: “Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with this person, something in which I was not involved.”
If Falwell were to depart from Liberty, it would represent a remarkable fall for a potent force in conservative politics. His surprise 2016 endorsement of Trump helped the New York real estate magnate win the Republican nomination for president.
Becki Falwell, 53, is a political figure in her own right, serving on the advisory board of Women for Trump. She also spoke with her husband and Donald Trump Jr at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. Jerry Falwell and others refer to her as “the first lady of Liberty University”.
Falwell’s decision in January 2016 to endorse Trump was one of the most dramatic surprises of that race. It immediately raised support among evangelicals, a major constituency for the Republican party.
Granda told Reuters the endorsement did not surprise him, as Falwell was considering backing Trump even before Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015. During a May 2015 conversation at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel, Granda said, Falwell told him Trump and Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, were pushing for the endorsement.
The Falwells had enlisted Cohen to help keep personal photographs from becoming public, Reuters reported last year. Granda said Becki Falwell told him about Cohen’s involvement in that matter.
Cohen’s role became public after comedian Tom Arnold surreptitiously taped a conversation. Cohen told Arnold the Falwells wanted to keep “a bunch of photographs, personal photographs” from becoming public.
“I actually have one of the photos,” Cohen told Arnold. “It’s terrible.”
Cohen did not identify who was in the photos. To Granda’s knowledge, none of the photographs were of him.
Liberty University was founded in 1971 by Falwell’s televangelist father, the Rev Jerry Falwell. Currently, the university has 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.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
