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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.

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Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Falwell announced that he is leaving Liberty U in order to spend more time watching his family.

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Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.

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Originally posted by jon-nyc:
“The board put me on leave, took away my duties as prez, and that’s not permitted by my contract,” Mr. Falwell said Monday night. “And they put me on leave because of pressure from self-righteous people.“


Self-righteous people. He said that.

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Jerry Falwell Jr. played a major role at the Republican National Convention four years ago, serving as a critical bridge between conservative evangelical voters and a Republican nominee who was thrice divorced, enamored of expletive, iffy on biblical verse, and a one-time Democrat who had proudly declared himself “pro-choice in every respect” before changing positions and parties.

“My family has grown to love and respect the Trumps,” Mr. Falwell, then the president of Liberty University, said in a seven-minute speech before a packed convention hall in Cleveland. “We have never met such a genuine and loving family. I truly believe Mr. Trump is America’s blue-collar billionaire.”

A return speaking role seemed inevitable after Mr. Falwell hosted the president for the university’s commencement in 2017, and the earliest discussions of the 2020 convention lineup did, indeed, include him, according to a Trump campaign official.

But convention planners quietly ruled him out late last year, amid concerns about Mr. Falwell’s private life — long before Monday’s blockbuster report by Reuters alleging a long-term romantic entanglement between himself, his wife and pool attendant, according to three people familiar with the situation.

As of late Monday, Mr. Falwell was on his way out as president of Liberty University, which he had taken a leave of absence from earlier after posting a suggestive picture of himself on social media.

Like many other one-time fixtures in Mr. Trump’s political orbit, Mr. Falwell has been shunted to the margins when he became a liability, in part because the president does not need anyone’s help in securing support from white evangelicals, who are now among his most faithful voters.

But Mr. Falwell and the president were once very close — close enough for Mr. Falwell to ask Mr. Trump’s now-estranged personal lawyer Michael Cohen to suppress “personal” photographs “between husband and wife,” according to a taped conversation between the two.

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Mr. Falwell’s 2016 speech, viewed in light of subsequent events, seems like a snapshot from a different era — and even his predictions about Mr. Trump’s presidency-to-be now seem dated.

Mr. Trump would work his “magic” on “$19 trillion in debt,” he said.

It now stands at roughly $26 trillion.

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Originally posted by pianojuggler:
What's even more curious is that Falwell was an ardent supporter of Ted Cruz. Then suddenly he became an I-1 fanboi, giving I-1 (twice divorced, serial adulterer, and religious illiterate) an "in" with the evangelical Christians. I wonder what the "deal" was there.