Former Anchorage pastor Prevo boasts about knowing how to "work" the tax laws

Perhaps Jerry Prevo, the former Republican king-maker in Alaska, was not the expert he claims to be on the IRS and how churches can maintain tax-free status and involve themselves in politics?

Perhaps Prevo, the former head of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, was the beneficiary of lax IRS treatment and being located in Alaska, not in the Lower 48?

And perhaps by saying that he knows “how to work” the federal tax law, Prevo will draw serious federal attention from the IRS because of his new position.

The question arises because Prevo’s attempt to do at Liberty University in Virginia what he did in Anchorage—use a tax-free institution to boost right-wing candidates—is now at the center of a lawsuit filed by a fired senior vice president at Liberty. Scott Lamb was the spokesman for the university.

Prevo, 75, took over as president of Liberty University after the sins of Jerry Falwell Jr. became too much for the school to handle. Prevo had been on the Liberty board since 1996 and served as chair from 2003 until he became president. He was close to Jerry Falwell Sr. and Jr.

He said on a phone call secretly recorded by the fired VP that “one of our main goals” of the political advocacy group within the university is “getting people elected.”

Falwell Jr. founded the political group in 2019 and it became the “de facto headquarters of evangelical Trumpism on a campus that had risen to national prominence,” the New York Times reported.

The Times reported in April that the university declined “to renew the contract of Charlie Kirk, the combative young conservative activist who started the Falkirk Center with Jerry Falwell Jr., the son of Liberty’s founder.”

Lamb said he was the one who decided not to renew Kirk’s contract.

“We gave it a lot of thought,” he told the Times, “and we decided to allocate our resources in different ways than that partnership with Charlie.’”

“Fallkirk” was a name created by combining Fallwell with Kirk. The new name of the agency is the “Standing for Freedom Center.”

Politico reported on the recording and Prevo’s statements in connection with the lawsuit filed by Lamb, who said one reason he was fired in early October was that he warned Prevo and others that overt political involvement would put the tax-free status of the school at risk.

He said he was fired because of questions about this issue and the handling of sexual assault and harassment allegations.

On the call, Prevo claimed to be an expert, citing his experience at dealing with politics at the Anchorage Baptist Temple.

“I have a 50c3 church,” Prevo said, according to the recording, Politico said. “For 30 years, I’ve known how to handle that and not get into trouble. The homosexual community has tried to take me down for at least 30 years, and they have not been successful because I know how to work the 50c3.”

Lamb told Politico that he believed Prevo was “directing him to do things that could have jeopardized the university’s status as a 501(c)(3) charity. He said he interpreted Prevo’s comments to mean that ‘the president of the university was directing his senior vice president to get ‘our people’ elected this fall.’”

“He's telling me to do things that we can't do,” Lamb said.

Federal law bans charities from political campaigning. Politico quotes the IRS saying they “are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

Politico said “Prevo’s comments suggest that Liberty may continue and possibly escalate its involvement in politics, which was a key part of Falwell’s tenure.”

Last spring Prevo hired Glenn Cary, a fellow Baptist minister from Anchorage who was the state chairman of the GOP.

“Prevo is no different than [Jerry] Jr. when it comes to supporting Republican politics and using [Liberty] as a platform,” a former Liberty executive told POLITICO.

In his lawsuit, Lamb said he was outspoken in his opposition to what he believes were violations of the 501(c)3 status and other issues on which he believes the university and its leaders had deviated from the religious mission of the school.

He said that an attempt to offer him a severance package, which he said was at Prevo’s direction, was “an attempt to buy his silence” and sign a non-disclosure agreement.

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