According to California Rep. Darrell Issa, the reported purchase made by Black Lives Matter of a California mansion worth $6 million needs to start a probe into the non-profit by the Department of Justice.
The national arm of the BLM movement, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, continues to come under more scrutiny thanks to the way it’s handling donations it has received, which amount to tens of millions of dollars.
New York Magazine recently exposed that BLM purchased a mansion worth $6 million secretly and never told the public about it. When the said publication asked the organization about it, BLM released a memo, talking about the likelihood of trying to “kill” the said story.
Given this, Issa said that the Justice Department should start an investigation into the non-profit.
So many red flags raised by the $6 million purchase of an L.A. mansion by the charity of Black Lives Matter.
BLM hasn’t come close to explaining this. And the Biden DOJ can’t ignore it any longer.
— Rep. Darrell Issa (@repdarrellissa) April 9, 2022
“The disturbing information that we are learning is more than enough to warrant an investigation from the DOJ — and doubtless not the end of all there is to know,” the representative told Fox News Digital.
“This definitely has the suggestion of misappropriation of charitable funds and an abuse of our nonprofit laws,” he added.
The purchase of the California home is a different one from a 2021 transaction in which the organization transferred money to a nonprofit in Canada, which was run by the wide of Patriase Cullors, a BLM co-founder. The said money was used to buy another house worth $3 million.
Following the revelation of these transactions, BLM defended their multimillion-dollar purchase of properties using donor funds in a long Twitter thread posted on Monday
The said thread is the organization’s response to New York Magazine’s revelation.
“There have been a lot of questions surrounding recent reports about the purchase of Creator’s House in California,” said BLM on its official Twitter account.
“Despite past efforts, BLMGNF recognizes that there is more work to do to increase transparency and ensure transitions in leadership are clear,” the thread goes on to say.
In its next few tweets, the organization called the myriad of reports and articles discussing its finances as “inflammatory and speculative” and blamed such reports for “causing harm.” They claim that these reports “do not reflect the totality of the movement.”
“We are redoubling our efforts to provide clarity about BLMGNF’s work,” it went on to say, citing an “internal audit, tightening compliance operations and creating a new board to help steer to the organization to its next evolution.”
BLM went on to defend how they spent their funds, saying that $3 million went to COVID relief, $25 million were spent on Black-led organizations, and on pushing for the approval of federal legislation against qualified immunity for the police.
The Twitter thread ended with the organization saying, “embracing this moment as an opportunity for accountability, healing, truth-telling, and transparency” and “working intentionally to rebuild trust.”
BLM has drawn scrutiny over its finances before. Back in April 2021, Patrisse Cullors drew the attention of many after buying four homes worth $3.2 million, as per a report by The New York Post. Her critics also noted that the BLM co-founder had described herself as a “trained Marxist” before.
A month following this controversy, she revealed that she would step down from her role as BLM’s executive director.
