BLM co-founder admits she held parties at mansion bought with donor funds
LOS ANGELES (TND) — Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors admitted in an Associated Press interview she spent overnights and hosted multiple personal events at the group’s controversial Malibu mansion.
Cullors’s statements come after she claimed to have “never misappropriated funds” related to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s (BLMGNF) purchase of a $6 million Malibu home with donor funds.
I have never misappropriated funds, and it pains me so many people have accepted that narrative without the presence of tangible truth or facts," Cullors said on Instagram, responding to New York Magazine’s report outing the group’s leadership for potential impropriety.
BLM leadership has indicated the property was intended as a type of “influencer house,” but reportedly very little was ever filmed there, save a few videos involving Cullors, including one from a series called “Patrisse Tries” during which she attempts unfamiliar tasks, according to New York Magazine.
It’s an example of how Cullors acted as both the head of BLMGNF and cultivated a lucrative public profile at the same time,” New York Magazine’s Sean Campbell wrote.
The parties included a birthday party for her son and a get-together celebrating the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The inauguration party featured 15 guests from local BLM chapters and other prominent supporters of the movement, Cullors said during her interview with the Associated Press.
Cullors said she intended to pay a rental fee to the foundation for her son's birthday party, according to the Associated Press. The AP apparently confirmed BLMGNF billed her, but when the group billed her, or for how much, is still unclear.
I look back at that and think, that probably wasn’t the best idea,” Cullors said, referring to the parties.
Cullors also said in her rebuke after the allegations came out that she “never lived” at the controversial property, but during her interview, she acknowledged a four-day stay at the mansion when she held her party celebrating Biden and Harris.
During Campbell’s investigation for New York Magazine, he also uncovered that Cullors was allegedly hiring her family to do work at the house.
Cullors’s brother allegedly ran security for the house while her mom had been contracted to do a cleaning job there, according to Campbell. Cullors’s sister was also found to have signed similar employment documents as other individuals who worked at the property, but Campbell said it was not completely clear if she was working there too.
The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a watchdog group, has filed an IRS complaint seeking civil or criminal penalties against Cullors for her “highly unusual” use of the mansion for her benefit.
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,’” said Paul Kamenar, the attorney who drafted the complaint against Cullors for the NLPC, according to The Washington Examiner.
