Liberty University paid Jerry Falwell, Jr. $15 million to make him—and his lawsuits—disappear

The school’s tax filings revealed details about a settlement with its scandal-plagued ex-leader.

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Liberty University paid Jerry Falwell, Jr. approximately $15 million to leave the school and settle all their lawsuits against each other after he tarnished his own reputation and turned the school into a national laughingstock.

Jerry Falwell, Jr. (screenshot via YouTube)

USA Today reports that the agreement was reached last year, but the details hadn’t been known until now, after the school filed its 2023-2024 tax returns.

The settlement was announced in 2024, but neither Falwell nor Liberty shared details about what it included − or how much Falwell would be paid.

But buried deep in a recently filed 2023-2024 tax form, the university revealed it's paying Falwell a multimillion-dollar figure to “settle certain claims and close certain transactions.” As part of the agreement, Falwell agreed to pay the university $440,000 to settle "disputed expenses" between him and the university. Details about those claims were not included.

(The tax filings themselves were not made public by USA Today, but The Roys Report obtained and published a copy.)

You must be wondering what the hell this is all about.

Lucky for you, I’m dying to rehash those details.

Falwell was the son of the school’s founder and carried on the fundamentalist Christian legacy until it all began to unravel in a series of bizarre episodes that included posting a bizarre picture of himself with his fly unzipped and belly out, and “liking” photos of younger women in not-so-Christian poses, and posting a racist tweet in response to the governor of Virginia mandating face masks in public spaces, and calling a parent “dummy” for asking why Liberty was reopening during the COVID crisis, and censoring the school’s own journalists, and apparently falling down the stairs because he got hammered.

Oh wait! I forgot the wild sex scandal that involved his wife Becki Falwell and a pool boy… and then another sex scandal involving a Liberty University student. As you may have read in jaw-dropping articles or heard on any number of narrative podcasts, Falwell and his wife met pool boy Giancarlo Granda while on vacation in 2012. Granda, the story went, began sleeping with Becki with Jerry’s approval—sometimes, Falwell was even in the room watching. The affair came to involve sexual text messages, topless photos, and videos. (Assuming everything was consensual, all of this was “scandalous” mostly because Liberty U. has strict rules for students that forbid any kind of sexual touch between unmarried people. Falwell was therefore engaging in sexual acts that would get him expelled from the university he ran… at least if the rules ever applied to him.) Along the way, Falwell began a business relationship with Granda, investing millions of dollars into a Miami hostel in a seedy part of town.

Anyway. That guy seriously claimed in a lawsuit that his former university was making him look bad.

Falwell’s case was never strong, but more to the point, it wasn’t like a victory would have salvaged his reputation when Falwell was his own biggest enemy. The reason everyone was mocking him had everything to do with his own behavior, not some public statement from Liberty’s Board of Trustees.

And then, in December of 2020, he dropped the case entirely… maybe because he realized that he was responsible for all the humiliation he was receiving. (Kinky.)

It’s not like all the problems went away after that. In April of 2021, Liberty sued Falwell for $10 million, claiming Falwell breached his contract, misled the school’s board, and concealed his alcohol problem.

And then Falwell resurrected his lawsuit in part because of alleged defamation and in part because he said there was a lot of his stuff that Liberty currently owned and that he wanted back.

… The 16-page document alleges that the university made defamatory statements about Falwell, including a speech delivered by David Nasser, then Liberty’s senior vice president for spiritual development, on Aug. 26, in which he referred to “shameful” actions and “sinful behavior” committed by Falwell. A later news release from Liberty also claimed that Falwell “lack[ed] spiritual stewardship,” according to Falwell’s lawsuit.

Falwell’s countersuit also makes new charges that Liberty has kept some of Falwell’s personal property by banning him and Becki Falwell from its campus since last year. “Since Mr. Falwell’s resignation, Liberty has wrongfully possessed and controlled Mr. Falwell’s property,” the lawsuit says.

Among the personal items Falwell claims that Liberty University has retained are:

• a .38 revolver

• the URL JerryFalwell.com (which is currently inactive)

• personal items from Falwell’s former offices, Liberty warehouses

• three horses provided to the equestrian center

• legal files from 1988 to 2007

• a collection of books and historical items

Nothing screams “I’m a conservative Christian” like filing a lawsuit against the fundamentalist college you once led in order to get your gun back.

And then in 2023, he sued Liberty to obtain his retirement benefits worth over $8.5 million. And then again in 2023, he sued Liberty for misusing his father’s name and likeness. (It feels wrong to say there was any “intellectual property” there.) He wanted the school to pay the Falwell Family Trust $7 million in exchange for using the elder Falwell’s name for the next four years.

It was going to take an army of pool boys to clean up this mess.

But then, last July, both sides announced that they had settled their grievances. All of them.

Both the University’s Board of Trustees and Jerry Falwell, Jr. sincerely regret the lengthy and painful litigation process, and each take responsibility for their part in the disputes. Falwell acknowledges and apologizes for the errors in judgement and mistakes made during his time of leadership. The Board of Trustees acknowledge and apologize for the errors and mistakes made on their part as well. The Trustees and Falwell are committed to move forward in a spirit of forgiveness and with the hope of reconciliation in a Christ honoring manner.

It’s not clear why the school had to apologize for Falwell’s self-inflicted scandals, but clearly, both sides had a vested interest in not being the center of attention anymore. They refused to tell anyone the terms of the settlement, adding that additional information would be “neither necessary nor constructive.”

That’s the last we heard of the situation… until now.

The tax returns obtained by USA Today’s Chris Quintana show that Liberty paid over $15 million to Falwell while he agreed to give the school $440,000 for vague “disputed expenses.” If you do the math, it still comes out to around $15 million in Falwell’s pockets—a mix of his golden parachute retirement package and cash to make all his lawsuits go away.

In total, Falwell will receive roughly $5.5 million to settle the lawsuits in addition to roughly $9.7 million he already received as part of his retirement package, according to the tax documents.

The school didn’t comment. Falwell told the reporter he was “very pleased with the outcome of the settlement negotiations and with the final settlement.”

Of course he was.

Since the settlement and the lifting of a ban on stepping foot on the campus, Falwell and his wife have returned to Liberty where it looked like his scandals hadn’t tainted his image one bit.

Separately from all that, the Department of Education (under Joe Biden) fined Liberty University a record $14 million for violating the Clery Act. In essence, the government said Liberty created a culture where students were afraid to report sexual violence and didn’t do nearly enough to let students know about threats on campus. But given how the Trump administration has already rescinded a fine against a different Christian school that lied about its tuition costs, it’s likely that they’ll rationalize rescinding the penalty against Liberty too. Hasn’t happened yet, but give it time. When the administration’s “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” met in April, Liberty complained about this very punishment, falsely claiming they were “singled out by the Biden Administration… due to the schools’ Christian worldview.”

In that case, Liberty seems to have learned a lesson from Falwell, Jr. If you loudly complain about being persecuted and know damn well the other side is more interested in making the problem go away instead of doing what’s ethically right, they’ll eventually give you whatever you want.

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