TPM: Don, Jerry, the 'Pool Boy' and The Times
By Josh Marshall
June 19, 2019 10:30 am
... Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife befriended young Giancarlo Granda, a pool attendant they met at a luxe, high life hotel in Miami Beach. As the Times puts it: “The Falwells, according to the person close to them, were impressed with Mr. Granda’s ambition. Soon he was hiking and water skiing with them in Virginia. Within months, they were offering to help him get started in business in Florida” ...
... Michael Cohen comes back into the picture. Tom Arnold befriended Cohen, got him on the phone earlier this year and got him to admit that he’d tried to arrange a deal to cover up intimate photos somehow tied to the Falwell family and Granda ...
... Cohen .. is a consummate bullshitter. He denied all sorts of things that turned out to be true. He’s literally going to jail in part for lying to Congress. On the other hand, this kind of thing is exactly what Cohen was in the business of doing: leveraging money and NDAs to make evidence of the sexual transgressions of important, rich people go away ...
... whatever role Falwell played in securing evangelical support during the 2016 campaign, it is now deeply embedded and ingrained far past what any personal scandal could undo. But it does also point toward the pervasive role of extortion, compromising information and strong-arming in the Trump world.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/don-jerry-the-pool-boy-and-the-times
