Amber Heard admits to NOT honoring her promised $3.5 donation to the ACLU

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Amber Heard has finally admitted to failing to pay her pledged $3.5million donation to the ACLU after claiming to have made the contribution.  

Testifying on the stand Monday, Heard said it was Depp suing her that kept her from fulfilling her pledge to donate her entire $7million divorce settlement. 

However, Heard has claimed several times – including under oath in Depp’s 2020 libel case in the UK – that she had donated the entire settlement to charity. 

Heard appeared on Dutch talk show RTL Late Night in 2018 where she said, ‘$7million in total was donated – I split it between the ACLU and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. I wanted nothing.’

In court today Heard said she has yet to make the full donation ‘because Johnny sued me for $50million in March of 2019.’ 

Heard said, ‘I fully intend to honor all of my pledges. I would love for him to stop suing me so I can.’

Terence Dougherty, the ACLU Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel, testified earlier in the case and said that so far only a total of $1.3million has either been donated by Heard or on her behalf.

Of that money, Heard contributed $350,000 directly in December 2018 and she has not paid any money since. $100,000 was paid by Depp and another $350,000 came from a fund at Fidelity, an investment company. 

Another $500,000 payment came from an account at investment firm Vanguard, which Dougherty said he ‘believed it was a fund set up by Elon Musk.’ 

Heard’s lawyer Elaine Bredehoft asked why Heard accepted a $7million settlement from Depp.

Heard said: ‘I didn’t care about the money. I was told if I didn’t agree to a number it could be overturned, we would never settle. I took far less than what they were offering and what I was entitled to.’

Heard said she donated the money to charity because she was ‘never interested in Johnny’s money.’

She said ‘I just wanted my safety and my future and he compromised that….I wanted him to leave me alone. I’ve been saying that since 2016.’ 

DIVORCE NEGOTIATIONS 

Heard said on the stand today that during negotiations with Depp she asked him to stop leaking stories to the media. He agreed to do so but only if she agreed to certain conditions.

She said: ‘He wanted me to drop charges, or some version of that, get back together with him and go on tour with him in the tour bus. Certain things that were impossible and go against all of, everything I’d stood for in getting my restraining order

‘I was feeling like I couldn’t live my life, people were turning on me, I had never been inundated with that much press. Every witness who indirectly supported me got bombarded’

Asked what was important to her about the divorce, Heard said it was just the statement that they put out.

She wanted to ‘get the press out of this’ and stop her and her family being harassed.

Heard said: ‘In that statement to clear my name, I wanted to clear my name, it’s all I have. I come from nothing. All I have is my integrity and my name and that’s what he promised to take from me’.

Depp’s accountant and business manager Edward White testified earlier in the trial and told the court that Heard initially demanded $4million after the divorce in May 2016.

Then the demand ‘continually increased’ to $5million and then it went up to $5.5million, White said.

As divorce negotiations continued the amount kept going up and jumped to $7million which ended up being the final settlement.

White said that on top of that Depp had to pay $500,000 of Heard’s legal fees and all the debts they had accumulated during their marriage – with everything paid to her being tax free.

According to White, the ‘total consideration’ paid to Heard by Depp was $14.25m.

The trial also heard last month that Heard threatened to publicly serve Depp with a restraining order if he did not continue financially supporting her lifestyle after she filed for divorce. 

Among her demands was the ‘exclusive use and possession’ of the black Range Rover she drove, with Depp continuing to make payments towards the vehicle. 

She also wanted to carry on living rent free in three Los Angeles penthouses she and her friends were staying in, all owned by Depp, and asked for her estranged husband to cover $125,000 of her legal and accounting fees.

‘JOHNNY SAID HE WOULD RUIN ME. I’D BE SELLING DEPENDS’  

The court heard a series of recordings of fraught phone calls between Depp and Heard during the summer of 2016 after their divorce.

In one of them Heard tells Depp: ‘I am not after a dime of your money.’

Explaining the recording, Heard said: ‘Johnny told me he would ruin me. That no one would ever touch me professionally. That I’d never work again. I’d be selling Depends’, referring to the adult incontinence products.

Heard said: ‘He’d ruin my career. He refused to not engage with the press by leaking false (stories).

‘I was trying to get him to call the dogs off. He was calling me a liar…I kept saying don’t make me prove it. He was calling me a liar and having a sophisticated PR machine (speak to the press).’

In another recording Heard told Depp that it was ‘unbelievable’ to suggest she was faking her injuries and that she had been involved in some ‘secret Fight Club’, referring to the film about an underground boxing group.

Heard told Depp about the corroborating evidence and texts that backed up her claims going back to years.

Asked about the recording, Heard became emotional and sobbed in the witness box.

She said: ‘I was begging Johnny to not make me prove what I’ve had to sit on the stand and prove and talk about it.

‘To have to sit where I’m sitting today. I didn’t want this, I don’t want to be here today. I was trying to point out something to somebody I didn’t think had a firm grasp on reality.

‘I was trying to point out how absurd it would be for him to keep making me prove this by calling me a liar. I was trying to get him to not call me a liar because everything I’d said is the truth. I was begging him not to make me prove it….there were years of me with injuries on the dates where we were fighting. Pictures from 2012. I was trying to say either you supposed people would rather believe this is an elaborate, years long campaign, for what? It just seemed crazy.

‘I thought no one was advising him in his best interests, always surrounded by yes men and nobody was saying this is crazy, don’t do this. I didn’t want to hurt him. I loved him so much. That’s why I’m explaining why I didn’t file a police report. I didn’t want this to hurt Johnny.’

AMBER MET ELON MUSK AFTER JOHNNY STOOD HER UP AT THE MET GALA – MAY 2016   

Heard testified about meeting ex-boyfriend Elon Musk on the Met Gala red carpet after Depp ‘stood her up’. 

Heard told the court that on May 2, 2016 she and Depp were invited to the Met Gala by designer Ralph Lauren but Depp failed to turn up for his fitting. 

Heard said that she went to the gala by herself because Depp was a no-show. 

‘I got out of the car and walked the red carpet by myself, with someone from Ralph Lauren’s team,’ she said. ‘Sat next to an empty place setting for Johnny – he effectively stood me up on the carpet.’

Heard said that she met a man named ‘Elon’ who she later realized was Tesla billionaire Elon Musk. 

She said: ‘I didn’t recognize him until we started talking. He’d reminded me we’d met once before. We spoke on the red carpet in the waiting line. He seemed like a real gentleman.’

Heard said she became friends with Musk after that. She began dating the Tesla founder soon after and by August the following year they had broken up.

Last month Depp’s former agent Christian Carino told the court about emails sent to him by Heard after she broke up with Elon Musk.

Carino, a talent agent with mega agency CAA and Lady Gaga‘s ex-fiance, said that Heard began dating Musk ‘immediately after Johnny Depp.’

In an email on August 7, 2017, Heard told Carino: ‘Dealing with breakup. I hate when things go public. See I’m so sad.’

Carino replied to Heard: ‘You weren’t in love with him. You told me 1,000 times you were just feeling space.’

Asked what he meant, Carino said: ‘Why would you be sad if you weren’t in love with him to begin with?’

Heard’s next email read: ‘I know but I wanted time to grieve and recover in my own time.’

In another email in the same conversation she said: ‘I hate that, yet again a man lets me fall on the spikes by myself.’

Carino said: ‘How so?’

Heard emailed back: ‘They’re mad at me for leaving them and put things like this out there’, apparently referring to the story going public.

Carino responded: ‘You could avoid all this if you stop dating uber famous people.’

Asked what he meant in the email, Carino told the court he was trying to tell Heard: ‘If you don’t like being in the press about your personal life don’t date people that are famous.’

HOW AMBER COVERED BRUISES ON HER FACE 

Heard told the jury that ‘no woman wants to walk around with a bruise on her face’ and that you have to ‘ice right away to reduce swelling.’

She said: ‘It’s very manageable if you ice it. Arnica is also a great remedy. If you want to cover up a bruise put foundation first, concealer, on top of that I used a theater makeup kit that I called my bruise kit.’

Heard’s lawyer handed her a circular makeup kit split into four different colored circles, which Heard held up to the jury.

She said: ‘The idea is you want to counteract what color your working with on the bruise. Red is what shows up right away, so you go with opposite on the color wheel by dabbing a bit of green.

‘After a day or two you get more purple so you go with red or orange tones. Day two was always the trickiest because day one and day two are hardest, you get the most blues and purples and you have to deal with the sensitivity.

‘After a few days that becomes more of brown, yellowish brown, five seven days in becomes more of a green then fades into a brown

‘I also noticed that bruising on your face tends to heal a lot faster – for me it was faster than bruising on my body.

‘Lips are the hardest because they crack and bleed’.

THE DOG DID IT! AMBER BLAMES YORKIE FOR POOP IN THE BED – FEBRUARY 2016 

Heard addressed the incident in February 2016 where Depp claims that she pooped in their bed at their Los Angeles penthouse after an argument the night before on her 30th birthday.

Depp’s chauffeur Starling Jenkins previously told the court that Heard told him it was a ‘horrible practical joke gone wrong.’

Heard suggested that it was one of their Yorkshire terriers, Boo, that did it, telling the court that the animal had ‘eaten Johnny’s weed as a puppy and had bowel control issues for life’

Heard said that Boo and their other dog, Pistol, would sleep in their bed so Boo wouldn’t have to get up in the night and possibly go to the bathroom on the floor.

She said that while packing to go away to the Coachella music festival, Heard left Boo in the bed, which appears to have been when the feces incident occurred.

Heard’s lawyer Elaine Bredehoft asked Heard: ‘Did you commit any kind of prank?’

Heard said: ‘Absolutely not. First of all I don’t think that’s funny. I don’t know what grown woman does. 

‘I was not in a pranking mood. My life was falling apart. I was at a crossroads in my life and I’d just been attacked on my 30th birthday by my violent husband with whom I was in love. It was

I don’t think that’s funny, period. That’s disgusting’.

Heard added that it made no sense to do something like that because whenever she and Depp argued he would stay at his house in another part of Los Angeles, meaning he wouldn’t even find the poop.

FINAL ARGUMENT BEFORE DIVORCE – MAY 2016 

Heard told the court that she didn’t see Depp for a month after the argument on her 30th birthday in April 2016.

But when they saw each other next on May 21 – the date of their final argument before she filed for divorce and a restraining order – he was still obsessed with the idea she had pooped in their bed.

Depp called her as his mother had died and he said that he ‘needed’ her.

Recounting the phone call, Heard said: ‘He was going on about scientists and DNA and feces. He’d had some scientific analysis done.

‘As soon as I heard about this feces he thought was a prank, all the scientists he conferred with, I thought he was out of his mind. Clearly the drinking and drugs are not getting better. Clearly the delusions are not getting better.’

Heard said she was ‘really affected’ by the fact that Depp’s mother had died and reluctantly agreed to let him come to her penthouse to talk.

Depp arrived and at first he was inebriated but ‘relatively peaceful.’

Heard said: ‘He wasn’t incoherent and he starts talking about the feces again this prank one of my friends he said left for him in our bed. I pointed out it didn’t make any sense and my friends wouldn’t do that. That’s not something a bunch of 30 year old women think is funny.’

Heard tried calling one of her friends who could prove it didn’t happen and they could move on.

She said: ‘I thought if I could get my friend on the phone to prove this didn’t happen we could move on and talk about the issues we could talk about. Our marriage was over and falling apart in front of our eyes, his mother had just passed. I couldn’t believe he wanted to talk about feces’.

When the friend didn’t answer, Heard called her friend iO Tillet Wright who tried to explain on speakerphone.

Heard said: ‘It made Johnny madder, he got more upset, grabbed the phone and started screaming at iO.

‘Started screaming at the top of his lungs, dyke bi**h, screaming expletives. Telling iO he can have me and f**k off, screaming at him.

‘He tosses the phone down on the couch and heads upstairs. I pick up the phone and try to apologize for the fact my husband at the time just screamed at my friends on a cold call. It sounded crazy.

‘iO said something to me on speakerphone and reminded me I wasn’t safe. He said Amber get out of the house, you’re not safe, get out of that house.

‘Johnny hears this, he’s on the stairs, turned around, came bolting down the stairs, grabbed the phone from my hand and really started screaming. Lit into iO, called iO every imaginable horrible name you can say to an LGBTQIA person, just screamed. Really nasty stuff

‘When he’s done he says you want to have my bi**h, you take her, you can have her. Pulls his arm back with the phone and throws it at my face. Hit me in what felt like my eye.

‘I put my head in my hands and immediately started crying. I said Johnny, you hit me. I’m sitting on the couch. I didn’t have time to put my hands up, still sitting cross legged in my socks on the couch, I haven’t seen him for a month.

‘He comes over to me as I’m crying and he does that taunting thing, he says oh I hit you yeah and he whacks me on top of my head, grabs me by the hair, yanks me off the couch. I don’t know if he was intending to hit me in the face or grab my face but he was making this gesture to expose my face, let me see your face, what if I pull your hair back. He yanks my hair back. I’m trying to prevent him from landing blows on my face. I remember this mocking taunt as he’s yanking me around the room’.

Heard’s friend Rocky Pennington came in and got between the two of them, Heard told the court.

Heard curled up on the couch as Depp screamed 10 times: ‘Get the f**k up! Amber get the f**k up!’

Depp’s security arrived and escorted him out and one of Heard’s friends called the police to report a domestic violence incident.

But when they arrived Heard refused to cooperate with them, and struggled with her emotions as she sought to explain why.

She said: ‘I wanted to protect Johnny. I didn’t want him to be arrested, I didn’t want the world to know. I didn’t want this to come out. I didn’t want this to be…I wanted to protect Johnny.’

‘I HAD THE DATE WRONG’ AMBER SAYS FIRST ACT OF VIOLENCE  WAS 2012 – NOT 2013 

Wearing a grey blazer, Heard began her testimony by saying that the first act of physical violence happened in 2012, not 2013 as she has previously claimed. 

The incident was when Depp allegedly slapped Heard repeatedly when she laughed at his ‘Wino Forever’ tattoo, which he changed from ‘Winona Forever’ after breaking up with Winona Ryder, his ex-girlfriend.

Heard said: ‘You never forget it, that’s how I remember it. It changes your life. You never forget the time someone hits you like that. I just had the date wrong.’

Asked how she could forget the date, Heard said: ‘I am embarrassed to say I would have liked to have believed the period of time I had to fall in love with Johnny and he was sober and he wasn’t violent to me lasted a lot longer than it did.

‘I would have liked to have believed I wasn’t hit so early in the relationship.’

‘I’d allowed myself to forget that the beginning of that period, 2012, before he got sober, was really violent and chaotic as well. I’m embarrassed to say that.’

Heard described how she had to detail every instance of abuse during her nearly five year relationship with Depp as part of this case.

She said she reviewed her therapists’ notes, calendars and other materials for a list of incidents that was ‘far too long.’

Asked why she didn’t just remember this, Heard said ‘that’s not how your memory or my memory works.’

She said: We were together for five years almost and it was a very violent, chaotic at times very loving emotional relationship. As anyone can imagine there was a lot going on.

‘Unfortunately the violence became almost normal, especially towards the end it was just – it’s hard to say that now but the violence was almost normal.

‘Your brain does with trauma what it does, put it away best you can. Frankly I was shocked to see a lot of the information presented to me through my therapist’s notes.’

Heard said that she and Depp used to use the word ‘couch’ as a ‘safe word’ and that’s why it cropped up a lot in audio recordings.

She said: ‘Like a word like truce where you put down the proverbial guns and say truce, we’re not fighting any more. Couch was supposed to be a word as a truce, I don’t want to fight any more. Let’s stop this.’

‘JUNKIE JOHNNY’ ARGUMENT – MARCH 2015

The court was shown a series of photos of Heard at red carpet events with injuries she claimed she sustained during fights with Depp. 

The court heard an audio recording taken by Depp or Heard during an argument on March 26, 2015. In the recording Heard tells Depp he is a ‘person I recognize for a brief moment and he disappears.’

She tells him he is an ‘insecure scary version of him that lashes out, very different every time.’

Heard says on the recording: ‘Adderall junkie Johnny, he’s abusive and he’s mean, he’s reactionary, anything I do and say is cause for violence. If I argue back then I’m abusive. If I don’t say anything then I’m dismissive. If I engage with him I’m part of the problem. If I don’t engage with him. If I look at him the wrong way it’s a problem. If I say the wrong thing I’m the problem.’

Asked in court what she meant by that, Heard said that the different versions of Depp ‘acted like independent versions of this person depending on what combination of drugs and alcohol he was on.’

Shortly after this Depp and Heard returned to Australia where Depp finally got sober.

Heard said: ‘I thought we had finally done it, he was going to be clean and sober for good. We had a wonderful period, we fell deeper in love than before. We were talking about having kids. When Johnny wasn’t using it was so peaceful.

‘We went back to Australia, we had my parents come and visit, we were talking about babies, a farm, buying a home in California. It was a beautiful peaceful period. It was wonderful’.

HONEYMOON BLOW UP, JULY 2015 

Heard claimed that her honeymoon with Depp was ‘peaceful’ until he started drinking ‘brown alcohol’.

‘The train trip itself was peaceful up until Johnny would start drinking brown alcohol. He’d already started drinking champagne when he wrapped on Pirates 5,’ Heard said.  

‘I wasn’t ready to accept we’d gone back to a pattern at all. On the last night on the train after this was taken Johnny and I got into argument about him wanting me to agree to him drinking liquor. An argument followed in our sleeping car.

‘Johnny slapped me across the face and got a hold of my neck and pushed me up against the wall of the car. It was a small narrow sleeper car.

‘He was standing on the floor. I was trying to get his arms off my neck and he was squeezing my neck for what felt like a very long time.

‘Every time he’d pull me away from the car he’d slam me up against the wall. I remember trying to get his arms off my neck and remember thinking he could not even mean to kill me

‘I remember being scared he wouldn’t even mean to do it. Clawing at him, trying to get his arms away from my neck. At one point he tripped the top of my shirt, I had a breast exposed

‘I pull at the lapel of his shirt and he rips the shirt off of him and wraps it around my neck and that’s how I woke up the next morning, I woke up with it still around my neck and a giant knot in the back of my head’.

The defamation case hinges on a December 2018 opinion piece Heard wrote in the Washington Post. The article never mentioned Depp by name, but his lawyer told jurors it was clear Heard was referencing him. 

The couple’s divorce was finalized in 2017 after less than two years of marriage.

Depp, once among Hollywood’s biggest stars, said Heard’s allegations cost him ‘everything.’ A new Pirates of the Caribbean movie was put on hold, and Depp was replaced in the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ film franchise, a ‘Harry Potter’ spinoff.

Heard’s attorneys have argued that she told the truth and that her opinion was protected free speech under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

A state court judge in Virginia’s Fairfax County, outside the nation’s capital, is overseeing the trial, which is expected to last until late May.

Less than two years ago, Depp lost a libel case against the Sun, a British tabloid that labeled him a ‘wife beater.’ A London High Court judge ruled he had repeatedly assaulted Heard.

Depp’s lawyers have said they filed the U.S. case in Fairfax County because the Washington Post is printed there. The newspaper is not a defendant.