The Daily Signal - Reporter Breaks Down Black Lives Matter's Fall From Grace

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Black Lives Matter has been amassing huge sums of money as the organization messaged on racial justice over the past few years in the wake of national unrest following the death of George Floyd. Andrew Kerr, an investigative reporter at the Washington Examiner, has dug into the organization's activities and found that Black Lives Matter's "shocking lack of transparency surrounding its finances and operations" raises serious moral and ethical issues. Listen to this bonus podcast episode below or read the lightly edited transcript. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Mary Margaret Ollahan, and I recently sat down with the Washington examiner's Andrew Kerr to discuss his reporting on the organization Black Lives Matter. Through messaging on racial justice, Black Lives Matter has been reimbing. in massive sums of money over the past few years. But over the last month or so, people have begun questioning exactly where that money has been going. Andrew breaks down for us what exactly is going on here and what role his reporting has played in exposing the organization's corruption. Let's dive in. My guest today is Andrew Kerr, an investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner who's been uncovering truly incredible stories about Black Lives Matter as of late.

Andrew, thanks so much for joining us today. Hey, thanks for having me on, Mary Margaret. You've been breaking story after bombshell story on Black Lives Matter. To start us off, can you explain to our listeners who we're talking about? What should we know about Black Lives Matter? Yeah, so we're talking about the national Black Lives Matter organization. Its official name is called Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. And this is the entity that received the $90 million windfall in 2020.

And it's also the group whose co-founder Patrice Cullors was involved with all the home purchases last spring that was first reported by the New York Post. So, yeah, this is the national BLM group. There's a lot of different local BLM chapters around the country. But everything I've been reporting on has been, you know, the main BLM group that has received the lion's share of the money during the nationwide. white unrest in 2020 following the killing of George Floyd. So can you walk us through what you've been finding out about Black Lives Matter? I understand that they've been amassing huge sums of money over the past few years, right? Yeah. So, yeah, to start at the top, so I mentioned that Patrice Cullors purchased all those homes.

She was the BLM co-founder. And last May, she announced that she had resigned. she was stepping down from the group to focus on other projects. And in her stead, she had appointed two other activists to take over the organization. And every news outlet under the sun covered that story that these two people were taking over Black Lives Matter. It turns out that those two replacement executives very quietly announced in September that they had never taken the job and that they were not going to take. take the job because they could not come to any sort of agreement with BLM on the scope of their work. So when I found that in late January, it was like, oh my gosh, like it's been eight months and

we don't know who BLM's leader is because BLM never, you know, announced this. And no press outlet noticed that these two people had, you know, announced that they weren't going to take the job. So I started reaching out the Black Lives Matter and asking them, like, who's been in charge of your organization and the $60 million you guys said that you ended 2020 with, who's the control of that money? And they won't answer. I reached out to the two co-executive directors, the ones that said they weren't going to take the job. And I asked them, hey, so now that you guys aren't taking the job, like, do you know who's leading Black Lives Matter? And they said, no, we don't. They didn't give us any information. Also, in mid-November

of last year, their finances were due to be reported to the IRS. BLM, the National BLM Group is a registered charity, which means that donations to the group are tax deductible for anybody that's giving to the group. In return, BLM has an obligation to report its finances and what's called a Form 990. That form was due by BLM in mid-November, and they didn't publish it. And they were supposed to provide it upon request, but we asked for the documents and they didn't respond. So that's when we started writing these stories of saying, you know, there's a shocking lack of financial transparency. We don't even know who's leading the organization. They're not giving up their tax forms. And this kind of started

a windfall where it turned out that in January, Washington State and California actually issued legal threats to BLM saying, hey, you're not to solicit in our states until you cough up for your information about your 2020 finances. And that was the result of your reporting? So Washington sent out their letter to BLM in early January before a reporting, but California sent out their letter after the reporting. And, you know, I can share that I had asked California, you know, their attorney general's office, you know, started asking the questions about BLM, not, you know, being properly registered.

and it was after I reached out to them that they then responded to me and said, by the way, we just sent this letter to them warning that we're going to... California essentially said, we're going to hold your leaders personally liable if you don't cop up information about your books. So I think it's fair to say that

the California action was taken a direct reaction to my reporting. That's insane. And didn't someone from the Washington Examiner literally go to the location that was registered under Black Lives Matters name and no one, they said that they haven't been using it? Yeah, so BLM filed a 2019 form 990,

and they said that their books were in office space in Los Angeles. And so I happen to have a colleague, or name is Tori Richards, that's based in Los Angeles. So she drove out to the address and was told by a security guard that there has never been a Black Lives Matter here. And then he added that we're constantly getting packages for Black Lives Matter that we have to return back to. send her. Wow. So we definitely, she definitely went to the right address. Just nobody was home.

And that's when BLM, they've given me very little information in response to, you know, probably like the dozens and dozens of emails and phone calls and text messages that I sent them. One of the only things that they've told me was that we don't have a permanent address anymore. Wow. But just kind of astounding, you know, this is an organization that claims to end 2020 with 60 million under its control and they don't even have a permanent address that you can go to to request tax documents that they are legally required to provide to the public upon requests. That's, you know, that just doesn't pass the smell tests. And so we're still talking about Black Lives Matter, the organization that's fundraising all this

money on messaging about racism and respecting the dignity of other people. What are they telling you about all this scandal? I know, I think you got a statement from someone on that. Are you referring to BLM itself? Yes. So what they did when we published our first first. story back in late January, just about an hour before we put that story up, they responded to me and they said, we are going to mail you a copy of our 2020499, which should

have contained information about the financial windfall that they received. When they sent us a copy of that document mailed it to us, I received it on Monday, what they did to kind of convince a really kind of complicated, you know, wonky financial situation is that BLM changed its accounting year that used to run January to December, so it matched the calendar year. And then they changed it apparently last minute to run July through June, which in effect has given BLM another three months to report its finances from 2020. So they provided me a document that contained their finances from the first half of 2020. Well, BLM was essentially dormant during that time frame. So it's a straight zeros all the way across. So it's kind of a sneaky move that they did, in my opinion,

to just change their fiscal year to avoid, you know, really disclosing what they did with all that money. And also what they revealed was that their books are now in the care of the law firm run by a longtime Democratic super lawyer Mark Elias. And they also have elevated a woman named Miniam Moore, who's a longtime Democratic political operative. She's a very tight with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and she's currently advising the Biden White House on the Supreme Court pick. She has been elevated to Black Lives Matters Board of Directors. Can you tell us a little more about that? Because I saw you and Jerry Dunleavy together uncovered that story. That's crazy that Mark Elias and then this longtime Hillary Clinton ally

both took on key roles in Black Lives Matter. What's going on with that? Yeah. So there's no indication whatsoever that, and to be clear, it's the Elias Law Group. So it's, you know, Mark Elias's namesake law firm. We don't know, like, you know, which attorney is actually representing them, but it says that, you know, BLM said in this, you know, short year 990 that they provided me on Monday that their books were now in the care of Elias Law Group. And then also this Minion Moore Democratic operative, you know, to the board of directors. So the, These moves appear to be taken quite recently. The document that disclosed this information is signed and dated November 11th of last year.

But you have to ask why they didn't provide that document. The reason why they're getting these legal threats from blue states is because they didn't upload that document in time. So like, why didn't you up, you know, why didn't you provide them that document, you know, in November when you claimed it was signed and dated? So yeah, it appeared, you know, BLM. they've kind of got caught with their pants down. You know, they've shut down their online fundraising.

They've deactivated their active blue fundraising pages. You can't donate to Black Lives Matter right now due to these legal threats that they're that they're facing and these compliance issues all across the country. Amazon recently just removed Black Lives Matter from their Amazon Smile fundraising program. So these are real issues that BLM is facing. And it looks like they, you know, it looks like they hit the. panic switch and they and they you know went to Mark Elias to help you know fix this up. Wow. And so that's a you know we don't know the exact timing and when they went there,

but there's no indication that they made these moves until you know earlier this week when they had provided these documents to me. Wow. So I know you touched on this briefly, but can you remind us which states have disciplined or reprimanded Black Lives Matter? Yes. They are out of compliance in California and Washington have sent the national BLM group, you know, formal notices to stop fundraising. And BLM is also out of compliance in New Jersey, North Carolina, Connecticut, Colorado, Maryland, Maine, and Virginia as of late yesterday afternoon, I haven't checked today. So you have more on that. So again, BLM is a charity and donations to BLM are tax deductible. So there's about 40 states across the country that require charities to register

with either their Secretary of State or their Attorney General's Office before soliciting funds from those states. And the states that I just named out, particularly California, Washington, and North Carolina have really robust requirements. So not only do charities have to disclose their leadership structure, they have to provide to these states their form 990s, they also have to provide to these states their audited financial statements, which would provide it even. more granular, you know, level of insight into and so what they did with all their money,

you know, during 2020. And so, you know, BLM hasn't provided those, those records to, to these states. And that's why, you know, these are public, you know, databases. You just, for instance, type into Google North Carolina charity search. And you can, you can, you can type Black Lives Matter into the first result that comes up. And, and you can see very clearly that, In North Carolina, for instance, they've been out of compliance. They haven't been registered since May of 2021. Wow. So, yeah, the only reason that Black Lives Matter isn't out of compliance in more states

is because their current registration in those states doesn't expire for another month or two. So, for example, in Florida, which has a really robust, you know, charity disclosure system, BLM's registration in that state doesn't expire until mid-April, if I remember correctly. So BLM hasn't provided their necessary documents to really any of these states. And so the longer that this goes, the more scrutiny they're going to be getting from states, I think. And this is a massive fall from grace. No, not too long ago, Black Lives Matter was reaping in massive sums of money. And they were just, they seemed to be untouchable.

It was just the organization that everybody talked about, Black Lives Matter. Right. I mean, if I look at 2020, I think that there were like, three big storylines in 2020. There's the COVID, the outbreak of COVID, there's the 2020 presidential election, and then there's Black Lives Matter. That was the dominant storyline for all of summer 2020.

And there's a lot of Black Lives Matter groups, or local groups around the country, which by the way, have been sounding off for years about the national BLM group, essentially scooping up all the money that is designated to their movement and not giving any of it to the activists that are, you know, actually doing the work on the ground. So this national BLM group was like one of the dominant storylines of 2020. They got a ton of money and now

they're not, they're just, they're imploding in real time. I don't think that there's another example of a charity that, I mean, over a hundred million dollars has flowed through this group in the past two years. And I don't think that there's a, I can't think, I can't find another example of such a dominant charity like voluntarily. shutting down their ability to raise funds while they're, you know, facing, you know, compliance issues all over the country. So yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a remarkable fall from grace. I'm a little bit biased because I'm, you know, obviously reporting this story, but I think it's a massive, I think it's, yeah, a huge fall from grace. And, you know,

we've worked together before. I've seen you uncover some truly incredible stories. I mean, the way, some of the reporting you've done on Antifa just blows my mind. But have you ever seen anything like this news cycle and this this narrative that you've uncovered? So yeah, for me personally, I've not seen a, you know, for the stories that I've reported, never, never seen a reaction like this. You know, I, hopefully we don't get too off topic, but I was one of the first reporters to report that a former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, was deliberately undercounting nursing home deaths. So we put that story out. It was the story of the century.

Yes. So that was what May, May of 2020. Yeah. And that, and the, that just kind of, you know, remained dormant, sat there dormant for about a year before the mainstream press caught onto it. And then, you know, the Cuomo's house of cars, you know, really quickly fell down. And, you know, then he resigned from, from office. So I've had a couple of big stories that, you know, they make their rounds,

on conservative media, and then mainstream media, this doesn't touch it. And then, you know, fast forward a year and then it kind of catches up to, you know, whatever the story was about. But with Black Lives Matter, you know, the lack of transparency and the size of the organization and the amount of money that they have and the influence that they have, the lack of transparency is just so egregious. I think that these states and have no choice but to take action here. And, you know, we're talking, I'm talking to legitimate charity experts that have been, you know, watchdogs in this arena for decades. And they're telling me this is like the worst example, instance of, you know, essentially the worst charity financial scandal that they've ever seen in regards to lack of

transparency. So like this is a legitimate issue. And it's worth noting that the, the mainstream press, legacy press, whatever you want to call them, that propped up BLM for much of 2020, has remained completely silent about this. Again, you cannot donate the National Black Lives Matter group right now because they have shut down their ability to raise funds while they're dealing with these issues. So this is a legitimate thing that we're talking about. This is not like fake news. We're not taking anything out of context here. Those are real actions that Black Lives Matter has taken while it deals with these legitimate threats from some of the most liberal states in the country. Wow.

Yeah. Well, I know that reporters can receive a lot of criticism for digging into any story, but with a hot button story like this, I'm curious. Have you received any personal blowback? Nope. Not even one, you know, random Twitter troll has accused me of being racist, which I think is kind of a badge of honor. My personal motivation for doing this story is that I get fired up when you have instances of small dollar donors being taking advantage of. I did the first serious reporting on the We Build the Wall crew from, what was that, 2019? And when I was with The Daily Caller, we put out stories about how, from quoting charity experts saying that, you know, donors should be, small dollar donors should, should, you know,

really take heed before donating to this group that Steve Bannon eventually got involved with because they're making all these claims about raising funds to build a border wall. And fast forward 18 months and the feds levied indictments against the people running that charity. So yeah, I mean, really the motivation here with Black Lives Matter is that a lot of good people in 2020 did not like the scenes that they were seeing on television and decided to donate to Black Lives Matter because they wanted to make a difference. And so Black Lives Matter has an obligation to report back to those people what they did with their money. And there's been years of allegations from local BLM groups that this national group has not been good stewards of their funding. There's been allegations that

the BLM founder, Patrice Cullors, has been, you know, has made millions, and she's purchased homes across the country, you know, for millions of dollars. There's allegations of financial impropriety. They have an obligation to report what they did with this money, report back to the people that gave their hard-earned money to their group, and they're not doing that. And so this is a very important story to cover because nothing makes my blood boil more than big, powerful groups taking advantage of the small donors that are supporting their movement. So, so yeah, I really haven't been receiving much blowback. Like I mentioned before, the national corporate legacy press liberal press has completely ignored the story and i think that's a you know

another sign that that uh that we've got it right because if there's if there are any facts that we got wrong in these in these stories you you know that they would come out and and you know start you know kind of poking holes in the story right but they can't do that again because black lives matter has shut down their ability to raise funds that's not something they would do for some like fake you know conservative witch hunt no this is some you know legitimate story it's truly incredible that the mainstream or whatever you want to call it legacy liberal media is not tagging on to this how long do you think it's going to take them to pay attention i mean your your andrew quomo story maybe it took like a year and then they pretended that they they had uncovered

all this first when you and the caller had reported it so long ago yeah i i thought that the i thought that the mainstream press would have been obligated to report you know weeks ago when when bnm shut down their finances but not a mention um not one not one Amazon Smile has booted Black Lives Matter off of its Amazon Smile charity fundraising program. The same Amazon that committed $10 million to BLM and other groups in 2020. 10 million. Not a mention.

So all these legal threats from all these states, all these compliance issues that BLM is dealing with, the fact that Mark Elias's law firm and Miniam Moore, a huge power player in democratic politics, has been elevated recently to key positions at BLM. Not a mention. It's frankly astounding to me that the legacy press hasn't picked this up. They wrote tons of stories.

They gave tons of coverage to this organization in 2020, coverage that helped this group rake in all of this money. And so now they have an obligation at the very least to report that, by the way, you cannot donate to this group right now because of all these issues that they're dealing with regarding their financial transparency. And so far they haven't done that. And it's just deeply, deeply disappointing to see that because from, you know, I'm able to stand up on my high horse because, you know, I mentioned the We Build the Wall Group.

I did reporting on that group an obligation to let my readers who were more likely to support that group had an obligation at the time to warn them that, like, hey, you may want to pump the brakes on this one. And fast forward 18 months and indictments were levied, you know, to, you know, that group. So, you know, it's just disappointing to see that the, the press that whose readership are the ones that would be more likely to donate to Black Lives Matter have not taken it upon themselves to notify their readers of any of any of this. I think it's scandalous. And so what's next for Black Lives Matter? Do you have any plans to take your investigations

further? I'm sure you do. Yeah, there's a couple other, a couple other angles that we're pursuing, but I don't want to talk about anything until, you know, There to go. Well, we're excited to see what you do next, and we're so grateful for you sharing your story with us. Great. Thanks for having me on. And that'll do for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation.

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