Media reports late last week revealed the Department of Justice may have opened an investigation into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.
According to CBS News:
The Justice Department is investigating whether donations to the national Black Lives Matter foundation were misused by the group’s leadership in the wake of an influx of gifts during nationwide racial justice protests in the summer of 2020, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation Inc., which is a separate entity from the Black Lives Matter protest movement, has long been accused by right-wing critics of not being transparent enough with how it spends its donations. Part of that criticism came when the group used more than $6 million to buy a house in Los Angeles.
The Influence Watch report on the BLMGNF includes this section on the $6 million house:
In April 2022, New York magazine reported that the BLM Global Network Foundation had used almost $6 million in donated funds to purchase a 6,500 square foot property in California. A man named Dyane Pascall reportedly purchased the house in late 2020, and ownership was soon after transferred to an LLC established by the law firm Perkins Coie.
Pascall serves as financial manager for a consulting company run by Patrisse Cullors and her spouse Janaya Khan, and as chief financial officer for Trap Heals, a company founded by the father of Cullors’s child. Cullors’s brother was reportedly responsible for “physical security” at the property, her mother was “approved for a cleaning job” there, and her sister signed an employee nondisclosure agreement, though it is unclear whether she worked there. Cullors herself used the property to film a cooking video for her personal YouTube channel.
The property was reportedly used for producing audiovisual content and for temporary overnight accommodations, though New York magazine noted that “relatively little content has been produced there over the course of 17 months.” Shalomyah Bowers, who serves on the board of directors of BLM Global Network Foundation, stated that the property was intended “to serve as housing and studio space for recipients of the Black Joy Creators Fellowship.” The fellowship program was publicly announced soon after journalist Sean Campbell of New York magazine asked about the property.
Campbell asked BLM Global Network Foundation about the property on March 30, 2022. He reported that afterwards the group’s leadership “circulated an internal strategy memo with possible responses.” These included “Can we kill the story?” and “Our angle – needs to be to deflate ownership of the property.” According to Campbell, the memo also addressed “Accounting/990 modifications,” and referenced the need “to first make sure it’s legally okay to use as we plan to use it.” Bowers told Campbell via email that the group had “always planned” to report the property in its May 2022 legal filings.
According to Campbell, documents and communications he had seen “suggest that [the house’s purchase and operation] has been handled in ways that blur, or cross, boundaries between the charity and private companies owned by some of its leaders,” and that it “creates the impression that money donated to the cause of racial justice has been spent in ways that benefit the leaders of Black Lives Matter personally.”
A professor who specializes in nonprofits, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, told New York magazine that the details of how the house was managed deserved closer scrutiny, and noted that intermingling assets among BLM Global Network Foundation, Cullors, and other entities could potentially put the group’s tax-exempt status at risk. Former GuideStar chief executive officer and Candid co-founder Jacob Harold remarked that even if the circumstances surrounding the house were not illegal or unethical, it was nevertheless a “very legitimate critique” to question why the group had purchased the property instead of spending the money on addressing “the core issues around Black Lives Matter.” Paul Kamenar, an attorney for the conservative National Legal and Policy Center, told the Washington Examiner that “it appears that BLMGNF’s purchase and use of the house by Cullors and other insiders violate the IRS rule prohibiting the use of nonprofit assets for private benefit as well as self-dealing.”
Later reporting revealed that Cullors had used the property for personal purposes. According to Cullors, she stayed at the house for a four-day period and hosted a party for about 15 people in January 2021 to celebrate the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Later, in March 2021, she hosted a second private party at the property to celebrate her son’s birthday. The Associated Press reported that Cullors “intended to pay a rental fee to the foundation” for the birthday party and that the BLM Global Network Foundation stated that it had billed her, though it was not clear when it did so. The BLM Global Network Foundation said it was working to prevent such private use of the property in the future, and Cullors admitted that looking back, it “probably wasn’t the best idea” to use the property that way.
The Capital Research Center and InfluenceWatch have tracked closely and reported widely on many developments regarding the BLMGNF and its staff.
InfluenceWatch has the following profiles regarding the creation and operation of the NGO:
Some of the Capital Research Center reports include the following:
