A new nonprofit has reportedly channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations towards providing free security for professional conservative influencers, including Nick Shirley, potentially running afoul of tax law, according to experts.
Conservative activist Brandon Tatum, a former police officer, founded the Blackline Guardian Fund last year after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, he has said.
Since then, according to a New York Times analysis, the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit has directed at least $436,000 to right-wing content creators, including through an unusual arrangement passing donations through a related for-profit entity called Blackline Security Operations, of which Tatum is CEO.
Experts told the paper that the fund’s activities, channeling donations to for-profit content creators, could violate tax law. The IRS requires that tax-exempt organizations be dedicated to the public good.
“Why is this a charitable activity?” Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, an expert on nonprofits at the University of Notre Dame’s law school, told the paper. “This is not feeding the poor. Influencers may indeed need the security, but they should pay for it themselves.”
The Independent has contacted the fund for comment.
Tatum told the newspaper that he does not currently take a salary from either organization and that donations are no longer passed through the for-profit entity.
The fund’s most prominent beneficiary is Nick Shirley, the conservative content creator whose controversial documentary on day care centers run by Somali-Americans in Minnesota claimed to uncover massive fraud and helped prompt a military-style immigration crackdown in the state.
Shirley has told his supporters the security support is necessary because of the high cost of producing his work and the fact that he has faced what he said were “constant doxxing attempts and threats from people who want to attack me largely due to politicians and leftist hate filled rhetoric as I expose billion dollar fraud schemes stealing from taxpayers,” he wrote on X in March.
“All donations go directly toward security costs,” he added in a subsequent post. “I have no access to the money except for security operations through Blackline Guardian and their operators.”
Tatum has also highlighted the association with Shirley, appealing to increasingly conservative X owner Elon Musk for donations in a post in December.
“The Guardian Fund is now covering Nick’s safety & security everywhere he travels,” Tatum wrote on X, tagging the billionaire.
The Independent has contacted Shirley for comment.
The fund has also worked with online figures, including Cam Higby and Nick Sortor.
Blackline also supports “protective services and security readiness” for churches and faith-based schools, its website claims.
The fund does not appear to have a publicly available 990 form disclosing its finances.
If there were issues with the fund’s activities, the Trump administration might not investigate them.
The IRS is down more than 26,000 staffers since Trump took office, and the president has made liberal use of the pardon power, often granting reprieve to individuals convicted of financial crimes who are his supporters.
Since Kirk’s shooting, conservatives have raised alarms about the threat of left-wing political violence.
Indeed, political violence has spiked in recent years in the U.S., and officials on all sides of the political spectrum have faced threats and attacks, ranging from the alleged anti-Trump shooting plot at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April to fatal shootings last year targeting Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota.
2025 was the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing terror attacks outnumbered those from the right, according to a September analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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