In court fight over a South Beach hostel, Jerry Falwell Jr. might get a new judge

After two years of fights in a Miami-Dade court over his family’s purchase of a South Beach hostel, Jerry Falwell Jr. wants a new judge and a new legal venue.

On Friday, the evangelical leader and president of Liberty University filed papers to move his case from Florida’s Circuit Court system to federal court. The switch would mean a new judge for Falwell in the 2017 litigation filed by Gordon Bello, a Miami-Dade commission aide who claims he was cut out of a stake in the Alton Road hostel that the Falwell family bought for $4.7 million in early 2013.

Bello was a high-school friend of Giancarlo Granda, the former Fontainebleau pool attendant who, at age 21, befriended Falwell and his wife, Rebecca, while the couple was vacationing in Miami Beach.

The Falwells gave Granda a 25 percent stake in the business that owns the Miami Hostel, a low-cost, dormitory-style hotel on the 800 block of Alton Road in the heart of South Beach, with a liquor store and restaurant on the ground floor.

Framed around the technicalities of a South Beach real estate deal, the Bello litigation has helped anchor some of the more tantalizing tangents of Falwell’s real estate and political ventures. The court papers labeled Granda a “pool boy” and divulged details later confirmed in the media through social media posts: that Granda became friends with the Falwells and flew with them in private jets. One trip in 2012 took him to Liberty to meet future president Donald Trump.

Trump’s now-jailed lawyer, Michael Cohen, was surreptitiously recorded in March recalling his effort to retrieve “personal” photos for the Falwells that would have been embarrassing if made public.

Bello, 28, claims he and his father, developer Jett Bello, pitched the hostel idea to Falwell after being introduced through Granda. In an amended complaint filed in July, the younger Bello said Granda first introduced him to Rebecca Falwell and that the two formed a “personal relationship.” Later, the papers said, Granda introduced Bello to Jerry Falwell Jr.

In his suit, Bello, a 2016 University of Miami law school graduate, claims Falwell promised him a role in the hostel venture. Falwell, 57 and a former real estate lawyer, said in a 2018 affidavit that he had a brief discussion in Miami Beach in 2012 with the Bellos about potential real estate opportunities. But he denied making any sort of partnership offer or promise, and this week asked Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Spencer Eig to dismiss the case for lack of evidence.

Days later, Falwell filed the motion to move the case to federal court. The motion itself isn’t available from Miami-Dade’s online filing system. But the electronic docket shows Falwell filed a “notice of removal to federal court” — a procedural action that automatically gets a party a hearing before a federal judge. It will be up to that judge whether to send the case back to Miami-Dade.

One of Falwell’s arguments to dismiss the Miami-Dade case has been that because he and the corporate ownership of the hostel are both in Virginia, home to Liberty University, that the court fight itself should be litigated there, too. Lawyers from both sides of the case did not respond to inquiries Friday.

Bello, now working as legislative director for Commission Chairwoman Audrey Edmonson, declined an interview. In a brief telephone exchange, he claimed the Falwell filing is a tactic to avoid a showdown in court.

“I believe that it’s a delay tactic,” Bello said. “It was based on fear.”

This story was originally published September 14, 2019 at 6:00 AM.