On cue, Black Lives Matter co-founder and leader Patrisse Cullors claimed that accurate reporting on her controversial real estate purchases was a “racist and sexist” attack on the Black Lives Matter movement.

The New York Post reported that Cullors did not take criticism well and used the racism and sexism card to defend herself.

Her comments came after reports from the Washington Examiner and New York Magazine revealed that she spearheaded a $6 million purchase of a southern California mansion. That mansion has at least a half-dozen bedrooms and bathrooms, a soundstage, a pool and bungalow, a music studio and parking space for twenty cars.

But the southern California mansion was bought with donations, which is likely to be illegal under existing state and federal non-profit and charity laws. Overall, charities cannot make purchases that personally benefits its board members or paid employees to avoid potential financial abuses of donations.

It also does not count her house-buying spree, during which Cullors bought four homes for a total of $3.2 million.

Cullors, under withering criticism, said that the media is out to get her. “The fact that a reputable publication would allow a reporter, with a proven and very public bias against me and other Black leaders, to write a piece filled with misinformation, innuendo and incendiary opinions, is disheartening and unacceptable,” Cullors said on the social media platform Instagram.

Yet Cullors did not acknowledge that she and other BLM leaders tried to quash the story about the mansion purchase in private emails. She also did not admit that the purchase was routed through companies owned and operated by Cullors’s spouse and her associates. 

She even made the claim that she had “never misappropriated funds,” though the New York Post article never mentioned these charges by name, and she said the criticism is “unfair and unjust.”

As an old saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.