We’ve finally gotten to the bottom of Amber Heard’s now-infamous ACLU donation mystery — and it doesn’t look good for her!
As we reported, Johnny Depp’s legal team has been claiming the Aquaman star never actually gave half of her $7 million divorce settlement to the ACLU like she said she did (the other half was promised to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles — she claimed she was NOT looking to keep any of Johnny’s money for herself). Team Depp had to jump through some hoops to get the ACLU to fess up, too, having to go as far as to sue the organization for the info.
Well, that precious info came out in court on Thursday when the testimony of Terence Dougherty, the non-profit’s head lawyer and COO, was played during Depp’s defamation trial. In the pre-taped testimony from December, Dougherty revealed that Heard has, in fact, failed to deliver on roughly half of her $3.5 million pledge to the ACLU.
Related: TikTok Thinks Amber’s Lawyer Is A Secret Johnny Fan!!
According to Dougherty, only a tenth — $350,000 — was actually paid to the charity directly by Heard, $100,000 was paid through Depp, $500,000 was paid through a donor-advised fund, and $350,000 was also paid via a donor-advised fund, for a total donation of $1.3 million.
Amber’s billionaire ex-boyfriend, Elon Musk, was apparently connected to one of the donor-advised funds, leading the org to conclude he was responsible for a HALF MILLION of her pledge. Wow.
Based on a 2016 email from Elon, the ACLU actually thought the $3.5m donation was going to be paid over ten years — a plan Heard was aware of, court docs revealed. Dougherty added:
“We understood that the other half [of the $7 million settlement] was going to a children’s hospital in Los Angeles.”
But that plan was never confirmed and, according to Dougherty, the ACLU failed to get anything else from the actress. He added:
“We didn’t receive any amounts in 2019 and on.”
When asked if the ACLU had made any “efforts” to get Amber to pay in the three years since her last contribution, Dougherty said:
“We reached out to Ms. Heard starting in 2019 for the next installment of her giving and we learned that she was having financial difficulties.”
Hmm…
Heard’s donations to the civil rights org were weighted toward women’s rights issues. Dougherty testified that the actress was even chosen as an ACLU ambassador in October 2018 because she “spoke with such clarity and expertise on issues of gender-based violence.”
It was after this point that the idea came up for Amber to write an op-ed — an idea that, as we previously reported, came from the ACLU, with reps from the org going as far as to offer to write “the first draft” for the actress! Dougherty confirmed this with the court, sharing:
“Often a decision has to be made working with ambassadors or other people who are speaking to the public, who does the first draft of the document. It sounds here that from Jess’ [Weitz] conversation with Amber, we are moving over with some kind of an op-ed and ACLU’s communications department staff members would be writing the first draft of it.”
The draft, which hopefully encompassed Heard’s “fire and rage,” went through MANY approvals before being sent to the actress, including being sent to the National Legal Director of the ACLU. Some people who worked on the piece claimed that the edits, mostly at her legal team’s request, “neutered much of the copy regarding her marriage and domestic violence” and “made the op-ed less impactful.” Heard even pushed for these references to be added back into the piece, but indicated it would be ok if not possible.
That op-ed became the inciting incident for this whole legal mess: it was a piece in the Washington Post in which Heard described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” While the Pirates of the Caribbean star isn’t named, his team argues it contains a “clear implication that Mr. Depp is a domestic abuser,” which they say is “categorically and demonstrably false” and defamatory.
Dougherty said four lawyers at the ACLU reviewed the op-ed before it was sent to The Post, noting that he wasn’t involved in this process and that those lawyers were women’s rights specialists.
How do U think this will affect the trial, Perezcious readers?
[Image via TED/ACLU/Law and Crime]
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