Asked for comment over a few weeks, the White House said it did not have information about the task force. It also did not respond to questions about what Falwell said were talks by the Trump team, shortly after the presidential election, to split up the job of U.S. education secretary into two: one for K-12 and the other for higher education.

Falwell said he was offered the job of higher education secretary in November but declined. Trump did not split up the department, which DeVos is now running.

Falwell has been president of Liberty, which calls itself the largest Christian university in the world, since his father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder and pastor, died in 2007. The senior Falwell founded it as a Baptist college and turned it into a university. In 2016, Forbes ranked Liberty on its "America's Top Colleges" list at 651 out of 660.

Falwell said that he and his wife, Becki, met with Trump; Bannon; Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter; and Reince Priebus, Trump's chief of staff, on Nov. 17 at Trump Tower, to discuss what role he could play in the administration.