Politico has a very big, very in-depth report on "evangelical" leader Jerry Falwell Jr.'s sculpting of Liberty University into what appears to be mostly a quite secular self-enrichment device. It's worth reading in full.
The short version: "More than two dozen" Liberty University officials, former officials, and Falwell associates were willing to come forward to describe a culture at Liberty in which Falwell regularly directs university loans, contracts, and real estate deals toward his immediate family and his allies. Among the blistering (though anonymous) quotes from Falwell's fed-up underlings:
"We're not a school, we're a real estate hedge fund."
"We're talking about the difference between right and wrong. Not even 'being a good Christian,' but being a good person, versus people who manipulate the system."
"If something doesn't make sense and Jerry really wants it to happen, he in some form or fashion has a personal interest."
But it's the specifics that are going to be hard for Falwell to rebut. Politico's Liberty University sources were apparently eager to back up their claims of self-dealing by Falwell with numerous specific events, from son Trey's personal involvement in the weird $50,000 scheme to rig two online polls to boost Trump to a new company formed by Trey to "manage" university-owned properties to numerous stories of Falwell friends getting favorable real estate and business deals. Ostensibly, the school is an apolitical, Christian-minded 501(c)(3) organization. In reality, Falwell seems almost exclusively focused on political boosterism and using the school as personal slush fund.
As an aside, Falwell is also apparently quite the office pervert, and "very, very vocal" about his "sex life." "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," one former senior official told Politico. This, in the context of exploring just why Falwell needed the services of Trump fixer Michael Cohen to quash some "racy" photos of either him or his wife. This adds nothing more than a bit of flavor to the inner life of one of a self-declared evangelical "leaders."
The most important bit about the Politico run-down of Falwell's activities, however, is that it happened at all. If "more than two dozen" current and former Liberty University officials were willing to cooperate on the story, with multiple senior officials willing to give blistering anonymous quotes about Falwell's unfitness and self-serving acts, that suggests the faux-evangelical leader has something close to a genuine mutiny on his hands.
It would be about time. But will these so-far-anonymous university leaders frustrated with Falwell's abandonment of the school's "Christian" values truly work to topple him? Or, when it comes to those values, are they all talk?
