We’ve lastly gotten to the underside of Amber Heard’s now-infamous ACLU donation thriller — and it doesn’t look good for her!
As we reported, Johnny Depp’s authorized group has been claiming the Aquaman star by no means truly gave half of her $7 million divorce settlement to the ACLU like she mentioned she did (the opposite half was promised to Youngsters’s Hospital Los Angeles — she claimed she was NOT seeking to maintain any of Johnny’s cash for herself). Staff Depp needed to bounce by means of some hoops to get the ACLU to fess up, too, having to go so far as to sue the group for the information.
Properly, that valuable data got here out in court docket on Thursday when the testimony of Terence Dougherty, the non-profit’s head lawyer and COO, was performed throughout Depp’s defamation trial. Within the pre-taped testimony from December, Dougherty revealed that Heard has, actually, didn’t ship on roughly half of her $3.5 million pledge to the ACLU.
Associated: TikTok Thinks Amber’s Lawyer Is A Secret Johnny Fan!!
In keeping with Dougherty, solely a tenth — $350,000 — was truly paid to the charity instantly by Heard, $100,000 was paid by means of Depp, $500,000 was paid by means of a donor-advised fund, and $350,000 was additionally paid by way of a donor-advised fund, for a complete donation of $1.3 million.
Amber’s billionaire ex-boyfriend, Elon Musk, was apparently linked to one of many donor-advised funds, main the org to conclude he was liable for a HALF MILLION of her pledge. Wow.
Primarily based on a 2016 e mail from Elon, the ACLU truly thought the $3.5m donation was going to be paid over ten years — a plan Heard was conscious of, court docket docs revealed. Dougherty added:
“We understood that the opposite half [of the $7 million settlement] was going to a kids’s hospital in Los Angeles.”
However that plan was by no means confirmed and, in response to Dougherty, the ACLU didn’t get anything from the actress. He added:
“We didn’t obtain any quantities in 2019 and on.”
When requested if the ACLU had made any “efforts” to get Amber to pay within the three years since her final contribution, Dougherty mentioned:
“We reached out to Ms. Heard beginning in 2019 for the following installment of her giving and we realized that she was having monetary difficulties.”
Hmm…
Heard’s donations to the civil rights org have been weighted towards ladies’s rights points. Dougherty testified that the actress was even chosen as an ACLU ambassador in October 2018 as a result of she “spoke with such readability and experience on problems with gender-based violence.”
It was after this level that the concept got here up for Amber to put in writing an op-ed — an concept that, as we beforehand reported, got here from the ACLU, with reps from the org going so far as to supply to put in writing “the primary draft” for the actress! Dougherty confirmed this with the court docket, sharing:
“Usually a choice needs to be made working with ambassadors or different people who find themselves chatting with the general public, who does the primary draft of the doc. It sounds right here that from Jess’ [Weitz] dialog with Amber, we’re transferring over with some type of an op-ed and ACLU’s communications division employees members could be writing the primary draft of it.”
The draft, which hopefully encompassed Heard’s “fireplace and rage,” went by means of MANY approvals earlier than being despatched to the actress, together with being despatched to the Nationwide Authorized Director of the ACLU. Some individuals who labored on the piece claimed that the edits, principally at her authorized group’s request, “neutered a lot of the copy relating to her marriage and home violence” and “made the op-ed much less impactful.” Heard even pushed for these references to be added again into the piece, however indicated it will be okay if not attainable.
That op-ed turned the inciting incident for this complete authorized mess: it was a chunk within the Washington Publish by which Heard described herself as a “public determine representing home abuse.” Whereas the Pirates of the Caribbean star isn’t named, his group argues it incorporates a “clear implication that Mr. Depp is a home abuser,” which they are saying is “categorically and demonstrably false” and defamatory.
Dougherty mentioned 4 attorneys on the ACLU reviewed the op-ed earlier than it was despatched to The Publish, noting that he wasn’t concerned on this course of and that these attorneys have been ladies’s rights specialists.
How do U assume it will have an effect on the trial, Perezcious readers?
[Image via TED/ACLU/Law and Crime]
