Instead of showering Russell Simmons with gifts on Father’s Day, the music mogul’s daughters Ming Lee and Aoki Lee paid tribute to their mother Kimora Lee Simmons.
“Happy Father’s Day,” Ming Lee, 23, wrote in an Instagram Story on Sunday, June 18. The recent NYU graduate included a childhood photo of herself and her mom walking the runway at a Baby Phat fashion show. She tagged her mom in the post.
Following his daughter’s dig, Simmons, 65, took to Instagram to seemingly blame his ex-wife for the family rift.
“Stop telling fathers they should have fought harder to see their children and start asking mothers why he had to fight at all,” Simmons wrote in a since-deleted Instagram Story, according to Page Six.
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Aoki Lee, 20, who just graduated from Harvard, responded to Simmons’ post on Monday by sharing to Instagram past text message exchanges with her dad and a muted video call where he appeared to be in a rage.
She captioned the FaceTime video with her dad: “My father is not well, for years, he needs help and won’t accept that he refuses to acknowledge he is not himself.”
“He has threatened and bullied my sister, my grandma, he has harassed my grandma in the middle of the night in poor health, [and sent] a man to my sister’s apartment at 2 a.m. to scare her. He lashes out at ANYONE who does not say, ‘Ooh Russell everything is fine.’ Well it’s not fine,” she added.
Kimora, 48, responded to Simmons with a statement on her Instagram Story Monday, saying she could no longer remain silent.
“I’m so sorry to have to do this,” she wrote. “But this man has been threatening my kids’ lives. I’m hearing so much more now. We won’t be bullied threatened or afraid.”
She added in a second slide, “Leave my kids alone. This narrative of attacking the only caregiver, the only parent in the home with the kids, the mom, AND the kids for one’s own shortcomings and embarrassments is dead. Dead. Dead.”
Kimora went on to accuse Simmons of having a history of being “abusive” to women.
“The same abusive ish,” she wrote. “This is how you manouver [sic] with the women all around you. Your threats and lies and intimidation manouvers [sic] and tactics are sad. Stop it please. Your own flesh and blood? Enough is enough.”
Kimora also posted a video and said her daughters haven’t been close to their dad for some time, but he continues to suggest on social media that he has a great relationship with his children.
In her video, which The Shade Room captured, Kimora said the family tensions escalated “over the past many months” when Simmons “cut off” his daughters financially.
“He was contributing a little bit of cash to their monthly college spending, not much, maybe a couple hundred dollars,” she said, adding that she has “receipts” to back up her claims.
Multiple media outlets contacted Simmons seeking comment, but he had not responded as of Monday night.
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