Jerry Falwell Jr. confirms he has resigned as head of Liberty University

In an interview with The Washington Post, Falwell, 58, denied that any wrongdoing led to his downfall. A university statement about his exit offered no specific reason or criticism and wished him “heartfelt prayers.”

Since 2007, Falwell had been at the helm of the Virginia university co-founded by his father, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., a colorful televangelist who helped shape the religious right. Falwell Jr. was suspended with pay early this month after posting a provocative photo on social media. Pressure for him to depart ramped up Tuesday, after news reports that alleged extramarital conduct involving him and his wife, Becki Falwell.

Jerry Falwell told The Post that he had not been involved in an affair, but his wife had; Becki Falwell, in the same interview, confirmed that account.

Falwell said he was leaving Liberty in part because he did not want his wife’s conduct to embarrass the school. But he also said he had been bored and wanted to move on. He described his critics as legalistic, moralizing and not acting as Jesus would.

Liberty’s board said former chair Jerry Prevo will remain acting president, and the board will form a search committee to hire a new leader.

The lack of specifics about why Falwell was departing maddened and worried some in the Liberty community, including alumni who have organized and advocated for months for his ouster.

Calum Best, a 2020 graduate and one of the founders of Save71, the alumni group, noted that information about the Falwells’ alleged behavior has been reported for years but did not trigger action.

“That is a massive indictment of their ability to lead the school,” he said of the board.

Falwell told The Post he sent a letter of resignation around 11 p.m. Monday. He said a board member was pressuring him to resign earlier Monday, but he wanted more time to decide — and to avoid giving credibility to a report by Reuters that day that described him watching his wife have sex with a young businessman named Giancarlo Granda. He told The Post that the Reuters story was “90 percent false.”

In response to an interview request, Granda issued a statement that accused Falwell Jr. of lying and reiterated his claims that some of his sexual interactions with Becki Falwell were witnessed by her husband.

Neither of the Falwells specified with whom Becki Falwell had an affair. She described the relationship as embarrassing and humbling. “I wish Christians, and people, would be as forgiving as Christ was,” she said.

The board had placed Falwell on leave Aug. 7, after he posted a photo on Instagram with his arm around a young woman whom he later identified as his wife’s assistant, with their zippers undone and bellies exposed. Falwell wrote in the caption that the drink in his hand was “just black water.” Alcohol and sexual promiscuity are banned for students under Liberty’s personal code of conduct. But Falwell said he has not broken any of the school rules that apply to staff members.

Falwell declined to disclose how much severance he will receive. His total reported compensation in 2017 was just over $1 million.

In the interview, he confirmed claims by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, who said last year that he had intervened on Falwell’s behalf several years ago when someone was threatening to blackmail the Liberty leader.

Falwell did not say who that was but said someone had stolen photos from his phone — of him and his wife in their backyard — and Cohen spoke to the person’s lawyers and threatened to contact the FBI if the photos became public.

“They weren’t fully nude,” Falwell said of the images. “They were just pictures of my wife. I was proud of how she looked.”

Asked about the photos on Tuesday, Cohen implied Granda was involved. Cohen told The Post that he had worked with Granda’s lawyer to “ensure the alleged photos were not released to the public.”

In a text message, Cohen also addressed Falwell’s endorsement of Trump, which came after the photo incident.

“I asked the Falwells, as a personal favor to me, to assist with the lagging Trump campaign in Iowa,” Cohen wrote.

At Liberty, where fall classes began this week, senior Payton Fedako said students were trying to focus on life at the Lynchburg campus and not on Falwell news, which Fedako called a “political environment” that is separate.

“I’d say it’s a small minority of people who are very involved or taking action, posting on social media, reaching out,” said Fedako, 21, of Columbus, Ohio. “The silent majority of people are not involved in politics. … I’ve chose the latter and am very happy with the school.”

The university’s statement about Falwell’s departure included praise for his accomplishments as president, including overseeing dramatically increased enrollment and more than $1 billion of ongoing or planned construction on campus.

Early in his tenure, Falwell executed his family’s long-term plan to reduce massive debt and shift to more online learning. He also made the university a high-profile destination for conservative politicians. He was one of the first major evangelical leaders to favor Trump ahead of the GOP primaries. In the interview Tuesday, he linked recent criticism of his behavior, and pressure for him to step down as Liberty’s president, to this year’s race for the White House.

“There’s no question that I’m being targeted because it’s an election year,” Falwell said, without providing evidence. “And I was very successful in bringing the evangelicals to Trump in 2016.”

The scandals eroded support for Falwell in the evangelical community, with critics increasingly vocal about concerns including racism, nepotism and creating a “culture of silence” for those who rejected Falwell’s pro-Trump politics. The overarching complaint was that Falwell had lost sight of the school’s evangelical mission to “train champions for Christ.”

Opposition to Falwell’s presidency intensified after two news reports. One, in the Washington Examiner, was a statement from Falwell blaming his wife’s affair for his personal stress and accusing Granda of trying to extort them. The second piece, by Reuters, quoted Granda as saying Falwell was involved in the trysts. Falwell and his wife had befriended Granda at a Florida pool almost a decade ago and went into business with him.

Earlier this month, the Save71 alumni group called for Falwell’s permanent removal from office, saying he had damaged the spiritual vitality, academic quality and national reputation of the school. It asked for him to be replaced “with a responsible and virtuous Christian leader” and launched a website detailing scores of controversial moments in the most recent five years of his tenure.

“This is a reckoning for evangelicals,” said Maina Mwaura, a preacher and writer who went to Liberty. “Most people I’ve spoken with feel deeply embarrassed by this, whether they went to Liberty or not. The Falwell family has been a dynasty of the last 50 years.”

“I feel like we’ve gone back to our Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker days,” Mwaura said, referring to the former husband-and-wife evangelists toppled by fraud and sexual misconduct allegations a generation ago.

He said character issues like “the things [Falwell] said about people of color or the things he said about Muslims or calling parents stupid — none of that seemed to matter until the image became hurt” and Liberty’s reputation seemed at risk.

Jonathan Merritt, a Liberty graduate who has written books critiquing conservative evangelical culture, said sexual indiscretions were Falwell’s tipping point.

“In some ways, Jerry Falwell Jr. is living the consequences of the moral hierarchy that his dad helped to put into place,” Merritt said, adding that he did not expect any broad church fallout. “Evangelicals tend to have an individualistic view of sin, so when one famous leader falls from grace, they tend to see it as ‘one bad apple.’ ”

Falwell Jr. said he thinks his father would have been amazed at what his son has built up out of the university he founded. But, he said, the role of being president has taken a toll on him.

“The quote that keeps running through my mind is Martin Luther King Jr., ‘Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last,’ ” Falwell said.