Kamala Harris blasted by Nina Simone’s family for ‘taking star’s estate from them & giving it to white people’
THE GRANDDAUGHTER of legendary jazz singer Nina Simone blames Vice President Kamala Harris for taking away the estate from her family while she served as California’s Attorney General.
RéAnna Simone Kelly found herself taking on the the vice president after publicly showering support for Chloe Bailey’s performance of the late singer’s “Feeling Good” on Friday.
There had been some criticism that her rendition was over-sexualized.
But RéAnna praised Bailey.
“Grandma was unapologetically herself. She was a muhhhf**kin badass woman who did what she wanted when she wanted. She was a sexual woman and she expressed that,” RéAnna tweeted.
A series of tweets followed where RéAnna singled out the vice president directly for doing an injustice to her family.
In one she wrote: “Nina’s granddaughter here.
“My family doesn’t run her estate anymore. It was taken away from us & given to white people. Our family name was DRAGGED in the media. We get NO royalties, nothing.
“Wanna hold someone accountable? Ask Kamala Harris why she came for my family.”
The public discontent aimed at Harris draws back to 2013 when she was serving as California’s Attorney General.
After Simone passed away in France back 2003, her daughter (and RéAnna’s mother), Lisa Simone Kelly, had been assigned as administrator of her estate and the charitable trust that Simone had established, first reported by the Daily Beast.
The estate included “a condominium in Los Angeles to her daughter, Kelly; funds from a sale of a house in France to Nina Simone’s brother, two small monetary gifts; and all residue to be held in trust and used ‘for the musical education of black African children from South Africa, Libaia and Ghana,’” according to a 2016 settlement agreement.
But back in 2013, the singer’s daughter had been accused of “breaching her fiduciary duty to the Estate and to the Charitable Trust” by allegedly dipping into the estate for millions and “wrongfully diverted Estate assets”, according to the settlement.
Kelly denied the claims.
In fact, the settlement reads: Kelly claims “she exercised her duties as Special Administrator and Trustee in good faith and claims that she has substantially increased the value of the Estate.”
Kelly was accused of spending $2 million of estate money, including a $1.5 million deposit to her personal company, according to the Daily Beast.
When she was AG Harris, she decided that Kelly was in the wrong and had initially sought to collect a surcharge of $5,937,749.42 plus over $2.5 million in interest, the settlement reads.
But after reaching terms to an agreement, Kelly was forced to give up her role as estate administrator and had to withdraw any claims to her mother’s royalties and intellectual property, according to the Daily Beast.
The settlement also details how Kelly was “permanently restrained and enjoined” from “exercising any rights with respect to the registration or transfer of any copyrights pertaining to recorded Nina Simone performances or compositions composed by Nina Simone…”
She also had to give up saying or implying that she had any affiliation with her mother’s legacy and estate, the Daily Beast reported.
After Kelly resigned as the estate administrator the court appointed San Pasqual Fiduciary Trust Company as Special Administrator of the estate and also named the firm trustee of Simone’s charitable trust.
The residual effects of the settlement’s terms appear to have struck a nerve with Kelly’s daughter, RéAnna who publicly is accusing Harris of harming her family.
“…Ask her why she separated my family,” RéAnna tweeted.
“Ask her why my grandmothers estate is in SHAMBLES now.
“ Ask her why we as her family no longer own the rights to anything. Ask her why she bullied my mother in court and my mom almost killed herself from the depression.”
The Sun reached out to the White House for comment but as of this writing no response has been given.
RéAnna continued to accuse Harris of bullying her mother.
“Ask her why she bullied my mother in court and my mom almost killed herself from the depression,” she wrote in another tweet.
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“Ask her why my mother had a gag order put on her and can not speak on these things. Ask her why she didn’t even want my mom to be able to say she was Nina Simone’s daughter. Ask her why she wanted us to walk away with NOTHING.”
Her mother has since come forward on Instagram saying her daughter’s “blazing” tweetstorm had “started a fire.”
“I support her 100%. I support everything she’s saying,” Kelly said in the video post. “She’s speaking her truth; she’s speaking the truth of our family.”