Black Lives Matter and its co-founder Patrisse Cullors could face civil or criminal penalties for illegally using the organization’s $6 million Los Angeles mansion for Cullors’s private benefit, a watchdog group charged in a complaint filed with the IRS on Thursday.
The watchdog group, National Legal and Policy Center, said in the complaint it was “highly unusual” that BLM Global Network Foundation purchased the mansion in cash through a middleman in October 2020, transferred the deed to an obscure LLC one week later, then concealed the mansion’s existence from its donors for 19 months while Cullors stayed at the property for days at a time and used it in multiple videos posted to her private YouTube channel.
“Enough is enough,” said Paul Kamenar, the lawyer who drafted the NLPC’s complaint. “The IRS owes the public and supporters of Black Lives Matter a full investigation of the group’s finances, management, and cover-up of the use of its $6 million LA mansion by Patrisse Cullors, even if she thinks compliance with IRS disclosure rules is ‘triggering’ and causes her and her associates ‘trauma.'”
Cullors said in an April 5 statement that she has never lived at the property and that BLM always intended to use it as a place for black artists to “foster creativity.” She said the group had to hide the mansion from its donors for so long because it “needed repairs and renovation.”
But Cullors disclosed in a phone call with reporters on Monday that she lived at the mansion for four nights shortly after the property was purchased in October 2020 as the FBI investigated a death threat against her.
The FBI declined to comment on Cullors’s death threat claim, telling the Washington Examiner it does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations.
The NLPC said Cullors’s overnight stays at the mansion are proof she unlawfully used BLM’s nonprofit assets for her personal benefit.
BLM’s mansion was also in a good enough state to be used for a video posted to Cullors’s YouTube channel in April 2021 in which she filmed herself in the property’s kitchen baking a peach cobbler.
And in May 2021, Cullors and other BLM leaders filmed themselves sipping wine on the mansion’s patio while railing against critics demanding accountability of the charity’s millions.
“Who the f* are you? You ain’t done s*,” BLM Los Angeles leader Melina Abdullah said in the now-deleted video. “I don’t need to be accountable to you. … I don’t know what accountability looks like with people that I don’t know and have never talked to.”
The disregard for accountability and transparency displayed by Cullors and the other BLM leaders in the video is further underscored by statements Cullors made last Friday that she gets triggered when she hears about charity transparency laws, the NLPC said in its complaint.
“I actually did not know what 990s were before all of this happened,” Cullors said in reference to the document charities are required to file to the public every year disclosing their financial activities. “This doesn’t seem safe for us, this 990 structure — this nonprofit system structure. This is, like, deeply unsafe. This is being literally weaponized against us, against the people we work with.”
The NLPC said the IRS should do BLM a favor and revoke its nonprofit status if it doesn’t wish to comply with charitable disclosure rules.
Cullors said in her April 5 statement she has no knowledge of what BLM has done with the property since she resigned from the charity in May 2021.
But encrypted communications obtained by New York Magazine reportedly show that multiple members of Cullors’s family have worked at the mansion after her resignation.
Her brother, Paul Cullors, is head of physical security for the mansion, the communications showed. Her mother was approved for a cleaning job at the property, and her sister has a nondisclosure agreement linked to the property similar to agreements signed by others who work at the mansion.
“It is abundantly clear that BLMGNF has violated one or more IRS laws and regulations regarding the operation of a nonprofit charity,” NLPC said in its complaint.
“The IRS must conduct a full investigation and audit of BLMGNF’s finances and transactions immediately, including examining the minutes of all Board Meetings, thoroughly reviewing their 990-tax return to be filed next month, assessing appropriate civil and criminal penalties, and revoking their tax exempt status if warranted,” the complaint added. “The public interest demands it.”
BLM admitted the “narratives” surrounding its secretive mansion “cause harm to organizers doing brilliant work across the country” in a lengthy statement posted to Twitter on Monday. The charity said it would soon unveil measures to boost transparency into its finances and leadership, but it has yet to provide any additional details on those measures.
BLM and Cullors did not return requests for comment.
Reporting from The Washington Examiner.
