- Meena Harris sold clothes and books that used the name and face of her aunt, the vice president.
- Biden’s transition lawyers told Harris that she should stop profiting from her aunt’s success.
- Harris’ campaign, Phenomenal Woman, has now stopped stocking products related to Kamala Harris.
- Visit the Insider Business section for more stories.
President Joe Biden’s lawyers told Meena Harris to stop using her aunt, Vice President Kamala Harris, in her business ventures, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Harris, a 36-year-old businesswoman and author, used the image of the vice president in a book and on her clothing lines.
The cover of Harris’ 2020 children’s book, “Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea”, featured his aunt’s face and name. (Maya is the name of Kamala’s sister, Meena’s mother.)
Meena Harris’ company, the Phenomenal Woman, already sold swimsuits
His company, Mulher Fenomenal, already sold swimsuits inspired by the vice president and sweaters with the inscription “Vice-President Aunt” stamped on the front.
But after Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election, the transition team’s ethics lawyers told Meena Harris that she was no longer allowed to use her aunt’s image in relation to her books or clothes, said a White House to the LA Times.
Transition ethics lawyers said she was allowed to sell products related to the vice president, but not to replenish them, reported Politico.
The cover of Meena Harris’ 2020 book, “Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea”.
Meena Harris
“Some things cannot be undone,” another White House official told the LA Times. “That said, behavior needs to change.”
Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman for the vice president, told the LA Times: “It is White House policy that the name of the vice president is not used in connection with any commercial activity that can reasonably be understood as an endorsement or support.”
Meena Harris told the Times in a statement: “Since the beginning of the campaign, I have insisted on upholding all legal and ethical standards and will continue to strictly comply with the Biden / Harris White House ethical rules.”
“With regard to Phenomenal, it was always our plan to remove the image of the Vice President from the site before taking office and not to use her image in any future products or campaigns.”
Meena Harris at the inauguration on January 20, 2021.
Drew Angerer / Staff / Getty Images
Meena Harris participated in several other projects defending her aunt in the past few weeks.
According to the LA Times, Harris founded a production company that made a video praising his aunt’s achievements and also collaborated with Beats by Dre on a pair of headphones with the brand “the first, but not the last”, a phrase famously popularized by Harris, the first female vice president.
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Democratic Party figures have criticized President Donald Trump over the past four years for boosting his family’s commercial interests through his presidential office, and the Biden White House is keen to distance itself from that behavior.
“We have been attacking the Trumps in all the screaming for years,” a former Kamala Harris adviser told the LA Times. “We should be a lot cleaner.”
In an interview with Insider before the release of his second book, “Ambitious Girl”, Harris praised his aunt’s achievement.
“For young women, seeing someone who looks like them elected to the second highest position in the country, is really an incredible feeling that we have all fought for a long time,” she said.