Jerry Falwell Jr., pictured in May 2019, said he was still due his full compensation as Liberty University president.
Photo: jonathan drake/ReutersJerry Falwell Jr. resigned as president of Liberty University late Monday night, following a tumultuous day during which he tussled with the university’s board of trustees over his future at the school.
In a phone call to The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Falwell said he had just sent his resignation letter to the board of the Christian school in Virginia. Mr. Falwell was placed on an indefinite leave of absence two weeks ago, following criticism about a photo he posted on social media showing him with his pants unbuttoned, a cup of dark liquid in one hand and his other arm draped around a woman. The woman, who Mr. Falwell said was his wife’s assistant, also had her pants open.
“The board put me on leave, took away my duties as prez, and that’s not permitted by my contract,” Mr. Falwell said Monday night. “And they put me on leave because of pressure from self-righteous people.”
He said he was still due his full compensation.
In a late Monday statement of their own, Liberty officials said Mr. Falwell had agreed to resign earlier on Monday, and then he reversed course. Since he was placed on leave two weeks ago, “additional matters came to light that made it clear that it would not be in the best interest of the University for him to return from leave and serve as President,” the university statement said.
Pressure for the college to part ways permanently with Mr. Falwell had ratcheted up on Monday, after Reuters reported that Mr. Falwell, 58, and his wife, Becki Falwell, had maintained a yearslong sexual relationship with Giancarlo Granda. Mr. Granda told Reuters that he met the Falwells at a Miami hotel in 2012 when he was 20 years old; he said he would have sex with Ms. Falwell, while Mr. Falwell watched.
Mr. Falwell said his wife had an affair with Mr. Granda, but he had not taken part and accused Mr. Granda of trying to extort them. “Most of what that guy said, the extortionist, is not true.”
Mr. Granda referred requests for comment to a representative.
Ms. Falwell couldn’t be reached for comment.
During a series of phone interviews with the Journal on Monday, Mr. Falwell seemed to waffle about whether he would step down.
Earlier in the day, he spoke as though his time at Liberty might be coming to an end. “There comes a time when you say, ‘OK, my work is done,’ and it might be today,” he said in an interview around 4 p.m. Eastern time.
He said he had no regrets from his time at Liberty, though he did call the picture he posted earlier this month stupid. He added, “I don’t want anything my family has done to be an embarrassment for the school.”
Later, however, he was vehement that he hadn’t resigned, saying a board member had jumped the gun. “God bless him, but he got it wrong.”
According to a person close to the university board of trustees, Mr. Falwell changed his mind after speaking to his lawyer and decided to try to negotiate the terms of his exit, the person said.
During the late-night phone call, Mr. Falwell—whose father, the famed pastor Jerry Falwell Sr., founded Liberty University—said repeatedly that he had done nothing wrong. “I’ve put 50 years of my life into this school,” he said. “Nobody else could have built it from zero when my dad died into a $4 billion school.”
When his father died in 2007, the school was in debt, and its total assets now stand at more than $3 billion, according to the university website.
He added, “If they want to let me go over a picture showing my belly on the internet, that’s not a school I want to be part of.”
Before midnight, he called again to say that he had embarrassed the school with “some things I posted on the internet. The reason I made this decision is I want what’s best for the university, and I don’t want to harm the future of the university.”
The photo that Mr. Falwell posted with his wife’s assistant fueled speculation about his drinking. “I promise that’s just black water in my glass,” he wrote in the caption to the photo. “It was a prop only.”
Asked on Monday if he drank alcohol, Mr. Falwell said he hadn’t broken any university rules, which didn’t prohibit staff from drinking, and “that’s all I’m going to say.”
Scandal has engulfed Mr. Falwell before; in May he apologized after tweeting a photo of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam in blackface, criticizing the governor’s mandate that residents wear masks.
John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College and author of “Believe Me,” a book about white evangelicals’ support for Donald Trump, said the recent accusations stuck because they hit at a core aspect of evangelical Christian morality. “In the conservative evangelical movement, there’s nothing worse than sexual impropriety,” Mr. Fea said, adding that the issue was one that the elder Mr. Falwell has often emphasized.
Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com
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