(Headline USA) Black Lives Matter paid disgraced co-founder Patrisse Cullors’s brother, baby daddy, and other close friends nearly $4 million, according to tax documents filed by the organization.
The documents, which were released on Tuesday, show that BLM paid an art firm owned by Damon Turner, the father of Cullors’s child, $969,459. They also paid an LLC run by Cullors’s brother, Paul Cullors, $840,993 for “professional security services.”
BLM also paid Shalomyah Bowers, a close friend of Cullors’s, and his company $2,167,894 for its consulting and management services. Another one of Cullors’s friends, Raymond Howard, received $107,000 for “fundraising counsel activities.”
Cullors herself billed BLM $73,523 for charter flights from June 2020 to July 2021, though BLM has claimed Cullors repaid those expenses some time after July 2021.
“Charter travel for the executive director was incurred due to security threats and during the COVID pandemic. This travel was for organizational purposes,” BLM claimed.
BLM also included its purchase of a $6 million Los Angeles mansion in the filing.
In total, the organization spent more than $37 million on grants, real estate, and charter on private flights, according to the tax filings.
The documents show that Cullors ultimately had exclusive control over how BLM’s funds were spent, since she was the only member of BLM’s board of directors from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021, which is the time frame covered by the forms.
“This [form] shows why Cullors could no longer lead Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation,” Tom Anderson, the director of the Government Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center watchdog group, told the Washington Examiner.
“I’m sure people who donated, in some cases their rent money, to BLM didn’t expect millions of dollars going to family members and close associates of Patrisse Cullors while thousands of protests were taking place.”
