Activist Shaun King lives lavishly in lakefront New Jersey home
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Shaun King has built his image on being a champion of the poor and disenfranchised, but the controversial civil rights activist lives like a one-percenter in a sprawling lakefront home, records show.
King, 41, moved earlier this year from a luxury two-bedroom apartment in downtown Brooklyn, to the five-bedroom, 3,000 square foot North Brunswick, NJ, property, with “a lakefront backyard” and gourmet kitchen, according to public records.
The property, surrounded by lush, tall trees, was purchased by King’s wife, Rai-Tonicia King, a Ph.D. candidate and educator, in November 2020 for $842,000, public records show.
King has been dogged for years by allegations of shady dealings in his charitable efforts in movements he has founded — including a lack of transparency in money he has raised for several criminal justice initiatives he has backed.
Fellow activists and those who worked with him raising cash for everything from Haitian orphans to the families of black men killed by police, have repeatedly raised questions about King’s leadership, and, in some cases, asked where the donations have gone.
Samaria Rice — whose 12-year-old son Tamir was shot dead by cops in Cleveland in November 2014 — blasted King on social media, accusing him of soliciting funds in her dead son’s name without her permission and even about his own identity as black or biracial.
“Personally I don’t understand how you sleep at night,” she wrote in an Instagram post addressed to King last month, after the activist revealed details of a personal conversation he had with Rice. “I never gave you permission to raise nothing.. Along with the united states, you robbed me for the death of my son.”
“You are a selfish self-centered person and God will deal with you…,” continued Rice, who heads up a foundation named for her son.
King co-founded the Real Justice political action committee in 2017 with former Black Lives Matter leader Patrisse Cullors, who resigned from BLM a month after The Post revealed she had spent more than $3 million on real estate in the US.
The federal PAC helps to elect progressive district attorneys across the country to “fight to end structural racism,” according to the group’s website, taking in more than $3.2 million from 2019 to 2020.
Of those funds, Real Justice doled out $460,000 in “consulting” fees to three companies: Social Practice LLC, Bernal Alto LLC and Middle Seat Consulting LLC, which are controlled by some members of the political action committee, including treasurer Rebecca Bond, according to a report.
Other PAC payments included $46,330 to Janaya and Patrisse Consulting, a company run by Cullors and her wife Janaya Khan. Those payments were made between 2017 and 2020, according to the Federal Election Commission.
A former journalist and father of five who worked on Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, King began his activist career after the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, 18, who was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., just a few months before Rice was shot while playing with a toy gun.
Following the two shootings, King launched the Justice Together coalition to help raise awareness of police brutality and support Black Lives Matter in 2015.
He quickly abandoned the group, former members said in an open letter published in “Medium,” citing King’s “lack of accountability.”
“He silenced dissent without productive discussion, he removed volunteers for speaking up due to his self-proclaimed paranoia, he repeatedly failed to meet his own timelines for his participation in the work, and he failed to delegate or discuss internally anything of consequence with the organization,” wrote the former members.
One woman, who had donated $50 a month to another entity King founded, claims his “Justice, That’s All” group continue to charge donors monthly even after it disbanded in the summer of 2015.
“I just wanted to know how he was using the funds that had been auto donated,” tweeted the donor, Javachik, in 2018. When she asked King directly on Twitter, he blocked her. “And then for the next month, my mentions were filled up with people calling me racist, a b—ch, etc.”
Emails and calls to King, his wife and media representatives were not returned.
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