The chief operating officer of the ACLU testified on Thursday that Amber Heard, Johnny Depp’s ex-wife, has only paid $1.3 million of the $3.5 million she has pledged to donate to the organization.
Heard said that she would be donating the $7 million payout that she received from a 2016 settlement in her divorce from Depp, to ACLU and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, according to Insider.
During the testimony, ACLU Chief Operating Officer Terence Dougherty said that the ACLU received donations of $350,000, $500,000 and $350,000 that were all “associated” with Heard. The organization’s chief operating officer added that ACLU now deems a $100,000 payment from Depp as part of Heard’s gifts.
A $350,000 donation that was paid in August 2016 came directly from Heard, according to Dougherty.
There was some doubt around Heard paying the rest as she did not sign a “pledge form” that would make the donations legally binding, Dougherty testified. The ACLU did recognize that her financial difficulties could impact the total donation or payment schedule. However, there have not been any concrete signs that Heard won’t eventually follow through, according to Dougherty. “I’m not aware of any indication that Ms. Heard has decided to no longer pay additional amounts,” Dougherty said in the deposition played Thursday. Doughtery also said that $500,000 of the $1.3 million donated thus far was from a charitable account that appeared to be “associated with Elon Musk” and he thought the tech billionaire had set up this account. (Heard dated Musk after her split with Depp, though Musk was “just filling space,” according to testimony on April 27.) In addition to Heard’s planned donation to the ACLU, she said she would donate the other half of her $7 million divorce settlement to the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. It was not immediately clear how much she has paid to the hospital to date. Vulture has reached out for comment.
According to Dougherty’s testimony, he believed Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who had a previous relationship with Heard, reportedly played a role in the donations sent to ACLU. He testified that Musk sent an email to ACLU’s executive director Anthony Romero about the actress’ plan to pay the full amount of donation to the organization over a period of 10 years.
“Amber, I described your plan to donate $3.5 million to the ACLU over the next 10 years as you very much believe what you were doing,” Musk wrote in the email sent to Romero in August 2016, according to Insider.
Dougherty’s testimony also indicated that Heard’s op-ed was penned in close collaboration with ACLU staff. A communications staffer said she wanted to see “fire and rage” in Heard’s writing. Dougherty said he had reviewed earlier drafts of Heard’s op-ed and, based upon that, “knew that they were referring to Johnny Depp [and] her marriage.” In the final edit, however, Heard’s legal team “neutered” references to her marriage and domestic violence. Heard tweeted on December 19, 2018, that she had become an “ambassador on women’s rights” for the ACLU. (She is still listed on the ACLU’s website as an ambassador.) Her op-ed ran one day prior. When Heard takes the witness stand next week, it’s all but guaranteed she will be questioned about the status of these charitable donations.
