Trump’s Ties to Jerry Falwell Jr. and His Wife’s Creepy Pool Boy Sex Saga Revealed

Jerry Falwell Jr. kicked off the COVID-19 pandemic in wildly reckless fashion, floating conspiracy theories about the deadly virus’s origins, downplaying its effects, and choosing to reopen his Liberty University, a private evangelical university in Lynchburg, Virginia, against the orders of local officials (naturally, it led to an outbreak of the virus on campus). He then proceeded to post an image to Instagram of himself on a luxury yacht with his pants unzipped, a cup of booze in one hand with the other wrapped around the body of a half-naked woman.

And then came the story of the pool boy.

Liberty U., an evangelical institution that decries all matter of perceived immoralities, had already been mired in controversy owing to its horny, nakedly corrupt president, Falwell Jr. He’d been caught on tape enlisting Trump fixer Michael Cohen to help disappear “racy” photos of his wife Becki, and, in a Politico investigation, was accused by over two dozen former and current Liberty officials of running a “dictatorship” wherein he’d brag about his sex life constantly, show nude photos of his wife to colleagues, and engage in rampant self-dealing.

“We’re not a school; we’re a real estate hedge fund,” one senior university official told Politico. “We’re not educating; we’re buying real estate every year and taking students’ money to do it.”

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But back to the pool boy. As the story goes, Becki met Giancarlo Granda back in March 2012. Granda, then 20 years old, was a pool boy of Cuban descent at the Fontainebleau, a trendy hotel in Miami Beach that once housed Sinatra and Dean. He spotted a woman in her forties lounging by the pool, eyeing him up and down, and snapping photos of him. When he approached her, she allegedly said, “Don’t waste your time with the younger ones. They don’t know what they’re doing.” She then propositioned him, asking if he wanted to return to her hotel room. “One thing though,” she added, “my husband wants to watch.” He said yes.

The woman was Becki Falwell. The husband was Jerry Falwell Jr.

“If I would’ve known that accepting this woman’s invitation to go back to her hotel room would’ve led to a scandal involving the president of the largest Christian university in the world and the president of the United States, I would have walked away and just enjoyed my private life,” Granda says in the new documentary God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty.

Directed by Billy Corben (Cocaine Cowboys), produced by Adam McKay (The Big Short), and premiering Nov. 1 on Hulu, the documentary puts Granda front and center, as the now 31-year-old recounts the bizarre story of how he was roped into the Falwells’ kinky sex life. The film coincides with a book, Off the Deep End: Jerry and Becki Falwell and the Collapse of an Evangelical Dynasty, from Granda and Mark Ebner, a Daily Beast contributor.

In the film, Granda describes how Becki said that the Falwells were a “swinging” couple who attended sex clubs but were looking for something a little more “private.” They went to a hotel room, where Falwell Jr. was sitting in the corner and gave them the OK to go at it. As they started getting intimate, Granda says, “The husband gets up… goes to the corner of the room. He takes off his jeans, and he just started jacking off.” (The Falwells claimed to Vanity Fair that Falwell Jr. wasn’t present during Becki and Giancarlo’s sexual liaisons.)

Granda says in God Forbid that the cuckolding affair continued on and off for years and included trips to the Florida Keys and New York City, plus daily texts. After three weeks, she told him she loved him. “She became my girlfriend,” Granda maintains.

The sex games, of course, continued, and Granda alleges that Falwell Jr. got more involved in them over time.

“Jerry went from just masturbating in the corner to, whenever I would finish, he would go in for round two,” Granda says.

The Falwells also seduced Granda with money, backing a $4.65 million hostel in Miami that they allowed him to help run and co-own. Granda remembers how the Falwells introduced him to Donald Trump in September 2012, and that’s where the documentary gets interesting.

While much of the Falwells’ sexcapades with Granda are now a matter of public record, the Trump connection has only been explored rather briefly. It truly began when, in 2015, a pair of Miami real estate crooks who helped Granda close on the hostel reemerged to blackmail Granda and the Falwells with the aforementioned “racy” photographs of Granda and Becki engaged in sexual acts. Falwell Jr. enlisted Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer, to handle the deal.

In May 2015, the Falwells meet with Granda and offer him $1.1 million to buy him out of the Miami hostel, as well as an additional equity stake in a La Quinta Inn in Lynchburg. Granda accepts. Then, they tell him the reason why they’re offering the deal: “They told me, Michael Cohen approached me and Donald Trump is going to run for president, and they want my endorsement,” Granda claims, adding, “If Jerry was going to get more involved with politicians just like his dad did, he had to ensure that all his loose ends were tied.”

On Jan. 26, 2016, Falwell Jr. endorsed Trump for president. His endorsement was an important one, allowing for others in the evangelical community to rally behind a seemingly ungodly candidate who’d had numerous sexual assault allegations, public affairs, and five children with three different women—much in the way his father’s endorsement of Reagan had tipped the scales in the former Hollywood actor’s favor over an actual evangelical in Jimmy Carter.

Granda alleges in God Forbid that, in July 2016, “just about four days” before Falwell Jr. spoke glowingly of Trump at the Republican National Convention, he received a text message from Falwell Jr. saying that he would ensure Granda would receive $600,000 after taxes in the Miami deal—which had been tied up in a legal dispute. Again, Granda agreed to the deal. “This was just another form of trapping my brother in,” offers Granda’s sister in the film. “Jerry Falwell was getting involved with the future president of this country, so he needed to make sure his circle was tight, and nobody was going to be out there saying anything crazy about them.”

Falwell Jr. emerged as one of Trump’s top surrogates, defending him in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape and the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally.

“I felt guilty,” Granda says in the film. “I’m like, I know the truth about Jerry. He’s trying to appear like this strongman, but I know him as the cuck in the corner of the room.”

Audio of Cohen admitting to brokering the Falwells’ photographs deal is somehow captured by comedian Tom Arnold in 2019, and the story blows up. Not long after, Granda says he contemplated taking his own life, texting Becki, “My life is absolutely ruined. When they find my lifeless body hanging in the woods, please make sure my dog is returned to my family. Goodbye.”

Instead, Granda decided to stay and fight. Disgusted by Falwell Jr.’s backing of Trump, Granda says he came forward to Reuters in August 2020 and told his side of the story.

“Initially, going back to 2012, I admired Trump,” says Granda, who was a Republican. “I thought he was someone I would like to become [president]. But now, he aspired to be a dictator. My family fled a country where there was a dictator that consolidated power. I didn’t feel optimistic about our country’s future. At that moment, I realized how much weight there was behind Jerry Falwell Jr.’s world. If this man was able to anoint Donald Trump in 2016, why wouldn’t he have that same power in 2020?”

Falwell Jr. ultimately resigned in disgrace from Liberty University, which is currently suing him for $40 million over breach of contract. He blamed everything on Becki.