The granddaughter of the iconic jazz singer Nina Simone blasted Vice President Kamala Harris and suggested she was responsible that the family no longer controls Simone’s estate.
The story: RéAnna Simone Kelly, the daughter of Simone’s daughter Lisa Simone Kelly, accused Harris, who served as California’s attorney general between 2011 and 2017, of causing the family a lot of trouble in her role.
She made the comments in response to a question from a Twitter user who asked why the singer’s estate made an account for her on the platform, given that Twitter launched three years later.
Her comments: In a Twitter thread on Saturday, Simone’s granddaughter explained that her family does not hold the rights to the late singer’s estate and suggested that the vice president is to blame for that.
“Nina’s granddaughter here,” ReAnna Simone Kelly wrote. “My family doesn’t run her estate anymore. It was taken away from us [and] 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.”
She also claimed Harris “bullied” her mother in court to a point where she “amost killed herself from depression.”
“Ask her why she separated my family. Ask her why my grandmothers estate is in SHAMBLES now. Ask her why we as her family no longer own the rights to anything,” she wrote. “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.”
Later in the thread, Kelly pointed out that one of the grandmother’s song was sang at the inaguaration in January. She was likely referring to John Legend’s performance of Simone’s “Feeling Good” during the inauguration evening concert.
“She knew what she was doing,” she added.
Worth noting: A 2016 settlement concerning the Nina Simone Charitable Trust mentions Harris several times in her capacity as attorney general, saying it was her “primary responsibility” to supervise “charitable trusts in California,” Fox News reports.
“The Attorney General asserts that [Lisa Simone] Kelly breached her fiduciary duty to the Estate and to the Charitable Trust and wrongfully diverted Estate assets. The Attorney General seeks to surcharge Kelly for amounts totaling $5,937,749.42 plus over $2.5 million in interest, which the Attorney General contends is far more than one-half of the Estate’s value during [Lisa Simone] Kelly’s administration of the Estate,” the settlement reads.
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