Actor Johnny Depp‘s legal counsel has claimed that Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, paid $500,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a children’s hospital in Los Angeles, on behalf of Amber Heard, on day 16 of the ongoing defamation case between Heard and Depp.
“I believe Elon (Musk) made a donation in my honor on one of the years,” Heard testified, but added that the amount did not count towards her pledge to donating to the charity.
Musk’s name came up during Heard’s cross-examination by Camille Vasquez, after Vasquez said that Heard had failed to fulfill her obligation, by not paying the donation amount to both ACLU and the children’s hospital. She stated that Musk and Heard were reportledly together, when the former had made the payment.
Musk was expected to testify in the high-profile case, along with others like Paul Bettany and James Franco, but he has not made an appearance, as of yet.
The ongoing legal battle between Depp and Heard began when the latter filed for divorce in 2016 accusing Depp of domestic abuse. While the duo had reached a settlement on their divorce in 2017, Heard subsequently wrote the op-ed piece, which Depp claims defamed him and resulted in him losing several projects, including Pirates of the Caribbean.
It has been reported earlier that Depp had paid $7 million to Heard as part of the divorce settlement, which the latter had pledged to donate equally among the two organisations, as charity. Although Heard had received the full amount by October 2018, she testified that she had failed to fulfill her prior obligations as Depp had sued her. Earlier in the trial, an executive from the ACLU had also testified that Heard had not made the donations despite promising to donate $3.5 million for the cause of domestic abuse victims.
Now, Vasquez said that in addition to paying $7 million to Heard, Depp had paid $100,000 to both organisations, in Heard’s name, for which she testified the same. She also confirmed that Musk’s $500,000 were not paid out of the divorce settlement.
The ongoing trial resumed a week after Heard testified that she “had to push away as many scripts as possible”, or minimise intimate scenes in the script, scrap scenes that required nudity, and change her wardrobe, in order to maintain her relationship with Depp.
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Heard also claimed that she had to let go of her “dream project” with writer Clive Barker, after Depp accused her of sleeping with the writer, who is terminally ill and bed-ridden.
She added that Depp would tease her with the names of her male co-stars like James Franco and Eddie Redmayne, and taunt her about being intimate with them.
The trial, which resumed on Monday, began with Heard’s team redirecting questions her. During her testimony in the first half, the Aquaman actor denied being diagnosed with mental health issues like anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder – a major point of contention, after clinical psychologist Dr Shannon Curry testified that she had diagnosed Heard with histrionic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder.
Heard’s cross-examination will continue on Tuesday, at the Fairfax County Courthouse in Virginia.