{"id":177471,"date":"2019-09-10T19:36:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T00:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/09\/10\/elmer-gantry-for-the-21st-century\/"},"modified":"2019-09-10T19:36:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T00:36:00","slug":"elmer-gantry-for-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/09\/10\/elmer-gantry-for-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Elmer Gantry for the 21st Century"},"content":{"rendered":"
It appears that Jerry Falwell, Jr. has turned Liberty University into a morass of self-dealing, intimidation, and real estate speculation<\/a>.<\/div>\n

This is extreme enough that it might even embarrass his late father, a man not known for shame:<\/p>\n

At Liberty University, all anyone can talk about is Jerry Falwell Jr. Just not in public.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cWhen he does stupid stuff, people will mention it to others they consider confidants and not keep it totally<\/i> secret,\u201d a trusted adviser to Falwell, the school\u2019s president and chancellor, told me. \u201cBut they won\u2019t rat him out.\u201d <\/span>

<\/span> That\u2019s beginning to change.<\/span>

<\/span> Over the past year, Falwell, a prominent evangelical leader and supporter of President Donald Trump, has come under increasing scrutiny. News outlets have reported on business deals<\/a> by Liberty University benefiting Falwell\u2019s friends. Trump\u2019s former personal attorney Michael Cohen claimed<\/a> that he had helped Falwell clean up racy \u201cpersonal\u201d photographs.<\/span>

<\/span> Based on scores of new interviews and documents obtained for this article, concerns about Falwell\u2019s behavior go well beyond that\u2014and it\u2019s causing longtime, loyal Liberty University officials to rapidly lose faith in him. <\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> In interviews over the past eight months, they depicted how Falwell and his wife, Becki, consolidated power at Liberty University and how Falwell presides over a culture of self-dealing, directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains. Among the previously unreported revelations are Falwell\u2019s decision to hire his son Trey\u2019s company to manage a shopping center owned by the university, Falwell\u2019s advocacy for loans given by the university to his friends, and Falwell\u2019s awarding university contracts to businesses owned by his friends. \u201cWe\u2019re not a school; we\u2019re a real estate hedge fund,\u201d said a senior university official with inside knowledge of Liberty\u2019s finances. \u201cWe\u2019re not educating; we\u2019re buying real estate every year and taking students\u2019 money to do it.\u201d <\/span>

<\/span> Liberty employees detailed other instances of Falwell\u2019s behavior that they see as falling short of the standard of conduct they expect from conservative Christian leaders, from partying at nightclubs, to graphically discussing his sex life with employees, to electioneering that makes uneasy even those who fondly remember the heyday of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., the school\u2019s founder and Falwell Jr.\u2019s father, and his Moral Majority. <\/span>

<\/span> In January, the Wall Street Journal<\/i> reported<\/a> that in the run-up to Trump\u2019s presidential campaign, Cohen hired John Gauger, a Liberty University employee who runs a private consulting firm, to manipulate online polls in Trump\u2019s favor. Not previously reported is the fact that, according to a half-dozen high-level Liberty University sources, when Gauger traveled to New York to collect payment from Cohen, he was joined by Trey Falwell, a vice president at Liberty. During that trip, Trey posted a now-deleted photo to Instagram of around $12,000 in cash spread on a hotel bed, raising questions about his knowledge of Gauger\u2019s poll-rigging work. Trey did not respond to requests for comment. <\/span>

<\/span> Jerry Falwell Jr. responded to more than two dozen written questions, defending his actions and criticizing the reporting of this article. \u201cI fear that the true information I am sharing in good faith will simply not make any difference. And will only result in more questions,\u201d Falwell said. He declined to answer subsequent questions. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

That growth is driven largely by a vast increase in the number of online students at the school, who now number some 95,000. Many Falwell confidants are concerned with where they see that university tuition money going: into university-funded construction and real estate projects that enrich the Falwell family and their friends.<\/p>\n

Among these projects is a Lynchburg shopping center that is owned by Liberty University but which members of the Falwell family have a personal financial stake in operating, according to emails obtained by me.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole article.<\/p>\n

Also, read this whole article<\/a> from the same author.<\/p>\n

This guy is dirty as hell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears that Jerry Falwell, Jr. has turned Liberty University into a morass of self-dealing, intimidation, and real estate speculation. This is extreme enough that it might even embarrass his late father, a man not known for shame: At Liberty University, all anyone can talk about is Jerry Falwell Jr. Just not in public. \u201cWhen …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[817],"class_list":["post-177471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177471"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}