Ep. 2 - God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty
In this revealing documentary, Giancarlo Granda, former pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Hotel, shares the intimate details of his 7-year relationship with a charming older woman, Becki Falwell, and her husband, the Evangelical Trump stalwart Jerry Falwell Jr. The documentary outlines Granda's entanglement with the Falwell's seemingly perfect lives and the overarching influence this affair had on a presidential election.
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The school placed Falwell on an indefinite leave of absence on Aug. 7 after a series of scandals.
“Falwell's fate appears to have been sealed after a former hotel pool attendant-turned-business partner, Giancarlo Granda, 29, told Reuters in an interview published Monday that he carried on an affair with Falwell's wife, Becki, beginning in 2012, when he was 20, and lasting until 2018.
Granda told Reuters that Falwell would watch as he had sex with his wife, and believes the couple preyed upon him.”
How often do conservatives throw the word “cuck” around, to slur someone, as they previously did with the “F” word?
In a free world people would be open to live and love as they please, as long they involved consenting adults.
But when you lead Liberty University and narrate how others should live/love, and conduct yourself hypocritically, you deserve to fall on your smug self-righteous face.
Jerry Falwell Jr.’s fall from grace was, like everything else over the last five or so years, predictably trite. The son of Jerry Falwell Sr., Junior stepped into his father’s camel-sized shoes and used his father’s political connections to promote the very lucrative (and tax exempt) morality of evangelical Christianity. At the peak of his powers, with Donald Trump by his side, Falwell Jr. and his wife came under scrutiny for what sounded a lot like what evangelicals and other conservative Christians would call an immoral lifestyle. The evangelical school his father began, Liberty University, called it his “loose lifestyle” in its 2021 lawsuit against the former leader. A “pool boy” with whom the Falwells maintained both a business relationship and an intimate relationship came under investigation.
People’s intimate lives are none of my beeswax when they don’t effect millions of people. If you make untold millions of dollars and use your political power to take away the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans based on a “moral” stance that you yourself cannot be bothered to even attempt to live up to, then your intimate relationships become everybody’s business.
You have only had to watch one soap opera in your life to know at least some of what happened next. In 2006, film director and Florida native Billy Corben hit the scene with a wildly entertaining documentary about the cocaine trade in the late 1970s and 1980s that burst out in Miami. Called Cocaine Cowboys, Corben’s fast-paced, uptempo soundtrack style of documentary filmmaking became a hit. Since that time he has done a lot of documentary films including the 30 for 30 series The U film about Miami University’s storied college football program. His newest documentary will be coming to streaming service Hulu on Nov. 1, and the trailer looks great.
Called God Forbid, it chronicles the rise and fall of the Falwells and promises to expose the “evangelical” family’s very un-evangelical lifestyles. (Or maybe I have it wrong and it is an “ultra-evangelical” lifestyle?)
The Hulu series God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down A Dynasty features how Jerry Falwell Jr.’s affairs with a pool boy brought the demise of the Falwell dynasty.
Falwell's departure came soon after Giancarlo Granda, a younger business partner of the Falwell family, said he had a yearslong sexual relat
AP, via NBC News:
RICHMOND, Va. — Liberty University has filed a civil lawsuit against its former leader, Jerry Falwell Jr., seeking millions in damages after the two parted ways acrimoniously last year.
The complaint, filed Thursday in Lynchburg Circuit Court, alleges Falwell crafted a “well-resourced exit strategy” from his role as president and chancellor in the form of a 2019 employment agreement while withholding from the school key details about a personal scandal that exploded into public view last year.
“Despite his clear duties as an executive and officer at Liberty, Falwell Jr. chose personal protection,” the lawsuit says.
It also alleges that Falwell failed to disclose and address “the issue of his personal impairment by alcohol" and has refused to fully return Liberty’s confidential information and other personal property.
Falwell responded to a phone call from The Associated Press on Friday with a text saying he was not available to talk.
It wasn’t immediately clear if he has an attorney representing him in the matter. The AP left a message seeking comment with an attorney who has represented him previously.
Falwell's departure from the Virginia university in August 2020 came soon after Giancarlo Granda, a younger business partner of the Falwell family, said he had a yearslong sexual relationship with Falwell’s wife, Becki Falwell, and that Jerry Falwell participated in some of the liaisons as a voyeur.
Although the Falwells acknowledged that Granda and Becki Falwell had an affair, Jerry Falwell denied any participation. The couple alleged that Granda sought to extort them by threatening to reveal the relationship.
The lawsuit says that Falwell had a “fiduciary duty to disclose Granda’s extortive actions, and to disclose the potential for serious harm to Liberty."
The resignation, reported Monday afternoon, is the culmination of a summer of bad press for Falwell.
Emerson Malone at BuzzFeed News:
Jerry Falwell Jr., a massively influential evangelical Christian and vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, has resigned as president of Liberty University, the AP reported, citing a school official.
The resignation, reported Monday afternoon, is the culmination of a summer of bad press for Falwell, who has been on paid leave from the university since Aug. 7. He succeeded his father, one of the university's cofounders, as president in 2007.
Liberty University did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment. However, Falwell told Virginia Business that news of his resignation was "completely false" and that he has no plans to leave.
On Monday morning, Reuters reported on an allegedly yearslong sexual relationship between Falwell's wife and a hotel pool attendant, Giancarlo Granda, with Falwell's consent.
Falwell also called Reuters' report "90% false," Virginia Business reported.
The Washington Examiner published a statement from Falwell on Sunday evening, in which he wrote that Granda was attempting to extort him, a charge Granda has denied.
"Over the course of the last few months this person's behavior has reached a level that we have decided the only way to stop this predatory behavior is to go public," Falwell's statement read.
Granda and the Falwells previously went into business together, BuzzFeed News has reported.
In early August, Falwell posted, and subsequently deleted, on Instagram a photo of himself with his pants unzipped, his arm around a woman he later said was his wife's assistant. The university's board of trustees subsequently asked Falwell to "take an indefinite leave of absence," according to an Aug. 7 statement from the school, which he accepted.
According to Liberty University rules, students cannot drink alcohol and must abide by a modest dress code. Backlash to the photo was immediate, with elected officials and school alumni condemning Falwell.
“How is this Jerry Falwell Jr. photo even real?” tweeted Meghan McCain. “Also if you're running the largest Christian university in America maybe don't put photos of yourself on social media with your pants undone on a yacht - with random women in bad wigs. So gross, so hypocritical.”
On Aug. 20, a group of 50 Liberty University alumni sent a letter to the university's acting president and board of trustees, requesting that Falwell be removed in light of his recent behavior and comments.
