Jerry And His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcock: The Jerry Falwell Jr. Story! Allegedly!
Jerry Falwell Jr. fucks his wife, OK? HE FUCKS HIS WIFE!
When we clicked on the Politico long-read everybody's talking about today, about Jerry Falwell Jr., leader of the Liberty University clown college, and his destruction of what passes as his father's legacy, the first thing we noticed was the author of the piece. Brandon Ambrosino ... haven't we told that guy to go fuck himself before? Yes, we have, five years ago! Ambrosino was one of a contrarian cohort of gay conservative journalists who wrote from time to time to tell us all that the mainstream LGBT movement was very unfair to those poor conservative Christians, who just wanted the freedom to deny LGBT folks life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness at the ballot box, in the courts, and anywhere else they could. Frankly, he pissed us off, but then we forgot about him.
However, as it happens, we think Ambrosino is probably exactly the right journalist to tell the inside story of what's really going on at Liberty. He went to school there, he knows the characters involved, and he even, at least several years back, had a "soft spot for the deceased evil known as Jerry Falwell," as we wrote at the time. He knows Jerry Jr. He knows Jonathan Falwell, Jerry's brother, who runs Jerry Sr.'s old Thomas Road Baptist Church.
Part of the title of Ambrosino's piece is "Someone's Gotta Tell The Freakin' Truth," and that's a quote from a current Liberty official who's close to the Falwells and who dished to Ambrosino -- of course, off the record. Indeed, that person was one of "more than two dozen" current and former Liberty employees who spoke for the article -- of course, off the record.
There's no way we can do this piece justice, as it is 8,000 words long, so you need to read the whole thing, as they say on the internet. But we will hit the highlights, only some of which are about Jerry Falwell Jr.'s penis.
Quickly, though, let's review what we've learned about Falwell Jr. lately: There's the thing about Falwell's HOT SEXY personal trainer Ben Crosswhite, who SOMEHOW got himself a $2 million athletic club from Liberty University for the low, low price of No Dollars. Crosswhite is a different HOT SEXY guy from Giancarlo Granda, the poolboy who made friends with Jerry and Becki Falwell and somehow came out of the deal running a multi-million dollar hotel. (By the way, Becki comes off in Ambrosino's piece like A ASSHOLE.) Oh yeah, and what were all those nakey dirty pictures that somebody had that involved some untold number of Falwells, which incarcerated former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had to help with, allegedly? Don't know, don't wanna see them! (Unless they are of the personal trainer, in which case look up our email and we'll be in our bunk!)
Anyway, that's some background, here's Jerry's penis:
At Liberty, Falwell is "very, very vocal" about his "sex life," in the words of one Liberty official—a characterization multiple current and former university officials and employees interviewed for this story support. In a car ride about a decade ago with a senior university official who has since left Liberty, "all he wanted to talk about was how he would nail his wife, how she couldn't handle [his penis size], and stuff of that sort," this former official recalled. Falwell did not respond to questions about this incident.
That is ... definitely ... yeah ... um ... just totally normal! As anyone who grew up in evangelical cult subculture can tell you, married heterosexual guys are definitely encouraged to talk all the time about how their hot hard cocks can't even fit in their wife! Don't believe them? Maybe they will show you, NO HOMO! And don't you say nothin' about "sounds like little Jerry's trying too hard," because the only thing that's trying TOO HARD around here is JERRY'S SUPER-HARD COCK, trying to get INSIDE HIS WIFE!
More than simply talking with employees about his wife in a sexual manner, on at least one occasion, Falwell shared a photo of his wife wearing what appeared to be a French maid costume, according to a longtime Liberty employee with firsthand knowledge of the image and the fallout that followed.
Still very normal, especially for the president of a very serious Bible college. "Here is my wife in a French maid costume. Should I tell you the part about MY COCK again?"
Falwell intended to send the image to his and Becki's personal trainer, Ben Crosswhite, as a "thank you" for helping his wife achieve her fitness goals, the employee said.
OK, maybe this is a little bit weird. We have only had a personal trainer for about six minutes, but we don't think it's customary for married hetero men to send trainers slutty pictures of their wives in order to "thank them" for being such good heterosexual personal trainers. Gym bros are free to correct us, but until they do, we're gonna say that's not a thing. You know, unless Jerry 'n' Ben have a rapport that involves exchanging sexxx pictures with each other. Hey, maybe they jerk off together, but not in the gay way! IT'S FINE, IT'S CALLED MALE BONDING, OK?
Hey pop quiz for anybody who knows Jerry 'n' Ben! Are their phones password-protected? Now you know why. ALLEGEDLY.
In the course of texting, Falwell accidentally sent the message to several other people, necessitating a cleanup.
What ... what kind of "cleanup"?
In a statement, Falwell denied this. "I never had any picture of Becki Falwell dressed in a French maid uniform, and never sent such a non-existent photo to Ben Crosswhite."
Well that is a very particular denial. Maybe she was dressed in something else! Maybe she was dressed in her birthday suit! Maybe it wasn't Becki Falwell! And also too, the Politico article says right there that he didn't send the pic to Ben Crosswhite, but that he meant to.
I'm into havin' sex, I ain't into makin' love, So come give me a hug if you into gettin' rubbed, You can find me in the club ... ALLEGEDLY!
Anyway, Jerry Falwell Jr. denies the existence of all pictures, even the pictures Politico included in its piece, like for instance of Jerry out at Da Club (like all Christian college presidents) with his son Trey. The WALL club, specifically, which is down the street from the hostel Trey co-owns with dad's poolboy, which Ambrosino has reported es muy gay-friendly:
In a statement on August 21, Jerry Falwell denied the existence of any photo of him at the club. "There was no picture snapped of me at WALL nightclub or any other nightclub," Falwell wrote. "I'm sure you already knew that though."
When told that I had obtained a photo of him for this article, Falwell said I was "terribly mistaken." "If you show me the picture, I can probably help you out," he wrote. "I think you are making some incorrect assumptions, or have been told false things or are seeing something that was photo--shopped."
After I sent him the photo, as well as a photo of Trey at Wall, Falwell responded: "I never asked anyone to get rid of any pictures on the internet of me and I never have seen the picture you claim is of me below. If the person in the picture is me, it was likely photo-shopped." In a second email sent 23 minutes later, Falwell wrote: "But the bigger question, Brandon, is why would I want a picture like that taken down if I had seen it?"
OK.
@POLITICOMag Jerry Falwell has gone on record denying the existence of any risqué photos *of himself*. (Read the pi… https: //t.co/90kmGowaIF
— Brandon Ambrosino (@Brandon Ambrosino) 1568024969.0
Hate it when people Photoshop Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of a college where you're not allowed to drink or dance or fuck or trip the light fantastic -- into the club scene in Miami all the time. That's just rude.
Of course, there's more to the story:
According to several people with direct knowledge of the situation, Falwell—the president of a conservative Christian college that frowns upon co-ed dancing (Liberty students can receive demerits if seen doing it) and prohibits alcohol use (for which students can be expelled)—was angry that photos of him clubbing made it up online. To remedy the situation, multiple Liberty staffers said Falwell went to John Gauger, whom they characterized as his "IT guy," and asked him to downgrade the photos' prominence on Google searches.
OK.
Wait, haven't we heard of John Gauger before?
According to Ambrosino's reporting, Gauger is the "IT guy," but he's also kind of Jerry's "fixer," a "nobody" who got an MBA from Liberty in 2009 and has managed to become the chief information officer at Liberty. AND he has a side business called RedFinch LLC, which contracts with Liberty while Gauger is also taking a salary from Liberty. Ka-ching! And RedFinch LLC is also the company Michael Cohen hired to set up a Michael Cohen So Sexy Twitter account (!!!) and also to write a bot to rig online polls (ONLINE POLLS!) in Donald Trump's favor as Trump was considering a run for president. Gauger is reportedly real close with Trey Falwell, who serves as Liberty's vice president. Because of course.
More about little Trey Falwell's possible involvement with the Cohen/Gauger poll-rigging thing:
Previously unreported about this incident is that Trey joined Gauger on the January 2015 trip to New York, and posted a photo to Instagramshowing a large amount of cash spread atop a bed in a hotel room. Liberty officials who saw the since-deleted post and described its contents said it raised questions about Trey's involvement in the pro-Trump poll-rigging effort.
"The idiot posted [a picture of] money on a bed?!" one current senior Liberty official said. "Why do that if you're not involved with it?"
If you'll recall from the original poll-rigging story, the deal was that RedFinch LLC would be paid $50K for its work to goose Trump's stats in a 2014 CNBC poll of America's top business leaders, and in a 2015 Drudge poll of Republican presidential candidates. Upfront, Michael Cohen gave Gauger a literal Walmart bag of 12 or 13 thousand American stripper tip dollars and also a used boxing glov e . Cohen stiffed Gauger on the remaining $37K, but still got reimbursed by Trump for the full $50K! So ... yeah.
Does this raise questions for Liberty, which as Ambrosino points out, is a non-profit, doing electioneering for candidate Donald Trump? No, says Jerry Jr., because Trump wasn't even a candidate then. Ambrosino, of course, points out that the entire fucking purpose of the online poll-rigging was part of Michael Cohen testing the waters for a Trump presidential run.
[A]s the Wall Street Journal reported —and as several sources independently confirmed in the course of my reporting for this article—Cohen had hired Gauger, a Liberty employee, to rig the poll in Trump's favor for the purposes of garnering support ahead of his presidential bid.
Right.
'We're not a school; we're a real estate hedge fund'
That's really the point of the article right there. If you can look past JERRY'S AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOCK, it's just corruption, self-dealing, more self-dealing, more corruption, funneling deals to young Trey Falwell, making loans to buddies out of Liberty's money and then awarding contracts to those buddies' newly birthed companies -- and Jerry and Becki Falwell sit atop all of it as Liberty's self-appointed dictators. Liberty, again, is a nonprofit.
And lest we forget, Brandon Ambrosino's sources are Liberty people .
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's decision to hire his son Trey's company to manage a shopping center owned by the university, Falwell's advocacy forloans given by the university to his friends, and Falwell's awarding university contracts to businesses owned by his friends.
"We're not a school; we're a real estate hedge fund," said a senior university official with inside knowledge of Liberty's finances. "We're not educating; we're buying real estate every year and taking students' money to do it."
Sounds ... like exactly what we'd expect from a clown college that's most prominently in the news these days because its presidentHAS THAT GLORIOUS COCKhas distinguished himself as the evangelical leader with his lips most permanently affixed to Donald Trump's ass. (Though there's been heavy competition for that one!)
The "school" now has assets in the neighborhood of $3 billion, which of course doesn't include any real estate the Falwells have offloaded to poolboys or personal trainers, or masseuses or concierges we don't know about yet.
Ambrosino reports that one of his sources even communicated with him on a burner phone, because that's how terrified people there are of Jerry Jr., and that even folks who live in Lynchburg, Virginia, and have fuckall to do with Liberty, didn't want to talk to him, because they were also terrified:
"Everybody is scared for their life. Everybody walks around in fear," said a current university employee who agreed to speak for this article only after purchasing a burner phone, fearing that Falwell was monitoring their communications. The fear is not limited to Liberty's campus. Several people who lack any tie to Liberty but live in the school's hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia, refused to go on the record for this story, fearing Falwell would take revenge upon them and their families. "Fear is probably his most powerful weapon," a former senior university official said.
But even those who fear have their breaking points.
In speaking out, said one longtime current university employee with close ties to the school's first family, "I feel like I'm betraying them in some way. But someone's gotta tell the freakin' truth."
Like we said, read the whole thing.
Oh yeah, and have an OPEN THREAD.
[ Politico ]
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!
Wonkette is ad-free and funded ONLY by YOU, our dear readers. If you love Wonkette, SUPPORT WONKETTE.
Thanks! You have no idea how much that means!
"So tell me again how you two met . . . "