Did you care about Johnny Depp - Amber Heard defamation trial?

I didn't even know it was happening till i saw some clips going viral etc

I hadnt been keeping up with JD after AH made the domestic abuse claims. But i started looking more into stuff after the clips and started watching the trials and it was uh..definitely interesting.

no i'm glad at least the trial's over, the growing cult of depp and his pr machine has been infuriating me tbh

No, I'm not interested and I don't like Johnny Depp as an actor anyway.

No, I haven't paid a single ounce of attention to them or their trial.

i've watched some clips here and there but not very closely. i'm not entirely sure how to feel about all of it tbh

This already misogynistic colleuge was going on and on about the case and expected me to defend amber/johnny but I just said what's it to me? I have this general apathy towards the case except for this slight distaste about the way Johnny's pr is making his fans/cult act. They are using this case to spread a harmful agenda. It's getting annoying at this point...

Everything I've learned about these people has been against my will

I learned more about these two than I ever wanted to know about them. And I didn't even follow the trial, the headlines were just that hard to escape.

It also seems to me that Heard really didn't do women who went through domestic abuse any favours. She appears to have been caught in more lies in six weeks than most people in 6 years.

Too long; didn't watch

I have watched the trending bits of the trials. I'm glad that I get to see the true face of Amber Heard through this case. This woman was crying about abuse yet she herself is a big abuser. The recording of hers calling Depp "a baby" when he mentioned her beating him up revealed her true colors.

Quote from Ves

There is a huge reason many women are ticked off at Amber Heard. She made a farce of true domestic abuse if anyone cares to actually examine the evidence and will make it that much harder for true female victims to be believed. I have to say I went into this admittedly biased for Ms Heard given that she was a star witness in the UK trial and they basically exonerated her, but after seeing the evidence for myself, I am firmly in the Depp camp.

To the women that seem to hope she will win to on the face protect the sanctity of believing the "victim" - ma'am, they will be believing the victim if Johnny Depp wins. The only difference is he's male. No less a victim though.

He certainly didn't come out of this looking like a model citizen or someone to be admired, either, as far as I'm concerned. He clearly has issues of his own and I don't envy her for having been in a relationship with a man with such profound drug issues. Did he abuse her though? Surprisingly, that was the one thing for which there doesn't appear to be any evidence.

I think my main problem with Amber Heard is that she lied frequently and unnecessarily and put herself in a position where you can't help but doubt all of her story. Had she admitted that she was no saint either, the recordings and witness statements wouldn't have made her look anywhere near as bad as they did. I'm not sure what her lawyers were thinking. They should have foreseen this.

people who are rooting hard for either of these people are weird af to me just saw someone got a tattoo of depps lawyer deranged

Quote from Minkah

Did he abuse her though? Surprisingly, that was the one thing for which there doesn't appear to be any evidence.

There is overwhelming evidence for this, actually, as the UK judgement clearly shows.

The way people ignore the UK ruling is frankly bizarre. I've explained it before, but libel law over here requires the defendant to prove what they have said is true. That's the only reason the case was filed in this country - because our libel laws are stupid and do not prioritise free speech. That's why Deborah Lipstadt found herself in the unusual position of having to prove that the holocaust actually happened.

It's also worth noting that Depp did file for appeal and the case was reviewed by two Lord Justices of the Court of Appeals (the second highest court in the country), who found not only that there was no error made in reasoning, judgement or procedure, but that it was not even arguable that there could be one.

Michael Hobbes, formerly of You're Wrong About (IE, someone who is good at looking through bullshit), walks us through just one of 14 alleged instances of abuse, the evidence for it, and the credibility of the case against it:

The amount of evidence that Heard has documenting her abuse (and not all of it is included in the US trial, sadly) is actually extraordinary. When people say that her evidence is thin or insufficient, they're effectively saying that no woman should be able to claim domestic violence, because very few have so many independently-corroborated pieces of evidence.

And I think Depp is the poster-boy for lying at this point, he's probably told over a hundred between his two rambling attempts at testimony.

But I gets it, I've actually been a witness in a criminal trial. Memory doesn't work the way you think it works.

Anyway I hope his fans don't despair when he loses, because he'll be back in the public eye in a couple months. When he goes to court for assaulting Ricky Brooks, location manager of the film City of Lies. What an apt title btw.

As for this case,

It's sadly much become much bigger than it should have been. It should never have been televised, for a start. But we're witnessing another dramatic turn in the zeitgeist like we did with Gamergate. A further regression of our culture towards a toxic pit of misinformation.

The argument that Heard has set back domestic violence victims is an alt-right wet-dream that people are manifesting into reality by being total fuckin drones.

Two posts I made on another forum,

Quote

Want to point out that at least some of the pro-Depp nonsense is being peddled by Hawthorn Advisors ("Trusted advisors to leaders and organisations that shape society"). Popbitch reports that they were contacted by Hawthorn to post articles smearing Amber.

Hawthorn also works for 10 Downing Street. And 11 Downing Street. They're trying to massage the lockdown party scandal and Rishi's wife's non-dom nonsense.

The co-founder of Hawthorn is Ben Elliott, co-chairman of the Conservative Party.

I think it's interesting that they contacted Popbitch.

The avenue of propaganda in this particular case is the non-traditional media. Tiktok, Twitch, YouTube. They've recognised a powerful feedback loop: Their bot-army increases engagement of pro-Depp content, which in turn increases the reach of that content, the misinformation feeds the desire for more of that content, and suddenly content creators know that they have a golden goose as long as they keep playing to the base. The end result is a near total domination of these platforms.

That's why the impression you get on social media is in stark contrast of the reports you see in traditional media like the NY Times etc.

They don't care about the NY Times, though.

They know more people look at Tiktok.

The result?

Absolutely depraved texts by Depp are read out in court as Amber cries, while people repost the clips and talk about how "epic" and "legendary" it is to say that you wish your wife is rotting dead in the back of a Honda Civic.

Audio of Amber testifying about her rape is played on Tiktoks where women simulate orgasms and fellatio.

When Amber says she received death threats including one in which someone said that they want to put her baby in a microwave? People make cartoons of her baby in a microwave.

Utterly deranged, feral shit is the norm. Saying, "Actually, Depp sounds like a dick"? Downvote oblivion, nobody will even see what you said.

Ultimately, when peddling bullshit, it serves these PR ghouls that the dominant platforms specialise in microform content where it is literally impossible to provide nuance or context. Soundbytes have always won campaigns. But on Tiktok and Twitter, you can only have soundbytes. There is a hard limit on anything beyond that.

What the Heard/Depp thing shows us though is that these platforms can be bought out entirely if you have the money and the resources. Once you create a dominant narrative, it is self-reinforcing. Engagement polices dissenting narratives. You can make sure the other side is basically never even fucking heard.

We have managed to create a new media that is even worse than the old one. Any effort to, on paper, democratise information, only ends up consolidating power.

We're fucking doomed, lads & ladies

Display More

Quote

American Crime Story Impeachment airs and people are in aghast disbelief at the unnecessary, irrational cruelty that Monica Lewinsky received and is like "wow we were so fucked up then" while at the same time picking apart Meghan Markle's facial expression, posture, use of words, attitude, whatever, to suggest that she is a total piece of shit.

People aren't interested in learning lessons. When a woman appears who makes a morally acceptable target, society vents its diseased spleen with no remorse until years after the fact. They're just waiting for it to happen. To focus all their weird fucking anger that they have. They become symbolic lightning rods for collective hatred. Symbolic of what? I don't know. I don't know what these women signify that scares people so much.

Does that seem far fetched? Why else would these women be subject to far greater aggression than Weinstein or Epstein? There's some seriously disturbing shit lurking in our cultural psyche.

Display More

Try to watch it as there are good insights, and the vlogger tried to be fair to both.

Quote from LalisaLovesNnie

External Content www.youtube.com

Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.

Display all external content

Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

Try to watch it as there are good insights, and the vlogger tried to be fair to both.

No she didn't

Here's a response to this very video.

Quote from tenfour

No she didn't

Here's a response to this very video.

External Content www.youtube.com

Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.

Display all external content

Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

Interesting. Will watch the response.

no, but i am curious who won?

Quote from jinaland

no, but i am curious who won?

Jury will resume deliberations on Tuesday. Verdict whenever.

Reminder that there are two cases being heard simultaneously:

Johnny Depp's defamation case against Heard, regarding the op-ed she wrote for the Washington Post

Amber Heard's countersuit against Depp regarding his attorney Waldman leaking edited audio clips to the press (which got him thrown off this case btw), communicating directly with twitter accounts and youtubers such as ThatUmbrellaGuy, and launching an astroturfing/bot campaign on the internet.

Since both are defamation suits, it is difficult for either side to win. Each must prove that the other maliciously spread untrue information for the express purpose of harming the reputation of the other. For Depp, this is difficult because he is a wife-beater, a fact that is proven in a court of law and upheld on appeal. For Heard, this is difficult because the one spreading the information is Depp's attorney, and although the judge in this case has given the jury instruction that they may treat Waldman's actions as if they were Depp's own, Waldman does not have the same knowledge of the relationship that Depp does. Therefore Waldman may not be spreading what he knows to be defamatory content.

Incidentally, if this was the UK, that argument would not protect Waldman. It doesn't matter if you THINK something is true, if you cannot prove it to be true, you lose. Which, again, is why it's significant that Depp lost his case against The Sun. The Sun's mere belief in his wife-beatery would not have been a sufficient defence.

i watched some clips on youtube but idk who is guilty or what

Yesh

Johnny is innocent

I didn't care that much but both of them are toxic.

Not purposefully but unfortunately even among my friends it's hard to ignore it especially with the memes and fails on Heard side.

Don't have a team in this but before the trial and after the trial is crazy to see the difference in perception. Before Depp was the villain but now Heard is villan and an idiot on top lol.

people kept sending me memes and I got pulled into it

There are things I find disgusting about internet reaction to it

• Bc Amber doesnt fit the image of a victim, people act like its impossible for her to be the victim. That narrative is so so WRONG and I cant get behind it
• Fucking people who ship JD and his lawyer, sike I will throw up
• Incompetent of AH's legal team. She insist they wont allow her to present the evidence. like WHY?????

I disagree that televising this trial was bad

Imagine instead of JD and AH, there were normal people agaisnt them. Imagine a regular folk having have to deal with that circus and huge teams of lawyers.

This televised trial make it understandable why rich people can abuse and assault poor and power less and get away with it.

do you think any non-celeb normal citizen victim can tolerate all the clownerary and circus of these courts????

That should be our take away that normal people dont stand a chance against those with power in court.

Not really, but the only thing I'll say is they both were toxic and brought out the worse in each other.

Quote from quarkie

People have been doubting her from the beginning. There's always been more people who believe she's lying. His fans have been claiming he's a sweet and innocent angel with no issues and is just tortured and misunderstood uwu since day 1. The trail has just emboldened them to be louder. They literally ignore the fact that the judge in the UK trail found 12 instances of him being abusive like it never even happened.

That's not exactly what happened. It wasn't a criminal case so there was no verdict on actual crimes. The case we whether the need stories published could be considered a lie.

The Sun newspaper is well known as very racist, fear mongering and general a lying pile of dogshit so they will publish anything. This isn't about these 2, the newspaper has said some horrendous things of many things from other countries to races and people. So chances are the sun could be making stuff up.

So Depp took them to court to say those headlines were lies. Judges found that based on the info collected by it's journos there is some level of facts that could help back up the stories and headlines. That doesn't automatically mean Depp did those things, just that there is reasonable evidence to write it as a story.

This trial is similar, both have sued each of spreading lies and it's too find out who's telling the truth or lying the least. It is not a criminal case.

I have to laugh at the sheer nonsense I sadly had to read

Quote from harambelives

That's not exactly what happened. It wasn't a criminal case so there was no verdict on actual crimes. The case we whether the need stories published could be considered a lie.

...

So Depp took them to court to say those headlines were lies. Judges found that based on the info collected by it's journos there is some level of facts that could help back up the stories and headlines. That doesn't automatically mean Depp did those things, just that there is reasonable evidence to write it as a story.

This trial is similar, both have sued each of spreading lies and it's too find out who's telling the truth or lying the least. It is not a criminal case.

Display More

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how libel works in the UK.

Here, even if The Sun had reason to believe that what they said was true, if they couldn't prove that it was true, they would have lost. Our libel laws are very, very strict, far stricter than any other country in the world. The Sun won because they had proven that Johnny Depp could be characterised as a wife-beater, and they could do that because they satisfied the judge that 12 instances of physical abuse had occurred. Not that it was reasonably possible that they might. But that they had.

Here, I'll quote the statute,

(1)It is a defence to an action for defamation for the defendant to show that the imputation conveyed by the statement complained of is substantially true.

(2)Subsection (3) applies in an action for defamation if the statement complained of conveys two or more distinct imputations.

(3)If one or more of the imputations is not shown to be substantially true, the defence under this section does not fail if, having regard to the imputations which are shown to be substantially true, the imputations which are not shown to be substantially true do not seriously harm the claimant’s reputation.

(4)The common law defence of justification is abolished and, accordingly, section 5 of the Defamation Act 1952 (justification) is repealed.

These were the grounds used to defend the case. Note, "substantially true".

Other countries are satisfied with reasonable belief. But in the UK, it has to be proven to be substantially true.

Again, THIS is why Depp brought the case in the UK. They always do this in libel cases, they shop them to the UK if they can. Because it's easy to win. But he still lost.

Quote from Ves

As I've said many times here - he is no saint. He didn't behave in any shining manner in this relationship either - but he's never claimed to be and he's also not the one that started the smear campaign. In terms of intention, she very clearly exaggerated events and made up others to hurt him.

One other things I found suspicious in the UK trial was that they assumed her there was no basis she saying she wanted money out of this because she donated her divorce settlement. Then we come to find out that this isn't true. She never donated anything. She claims it was because Mr. Depp sued her, but she had the entire sum of 7 million 13 months before any suit.

External Content www.youtube.com

Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.

Display all external content

Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

Lets address these points in turn.

1) "He didn't claim to be"

It has always been Depp's argument that he has never been physical with Amber Heard. In fact, he says he has never been physically violent with anyone, which is a blatant lie as he has a history of it and indeed has a court case due in two months involving someone he assaulted.

In the UK trial, we see him flat out denying each accused instance of abuse, until finally being confronted with tape of him seemingly admitting to headbutting Amber. It is only after that evidence that he goes against his written testimony and says that yes, he headbutt Amber, but it was by accident as he was trying to restrain her.

In contrast, Heard has never denied either

A) that their arguments devolved into physical fights in which both parties hit each other, and

B) they frequently said terrible things to each other.

In particular, Amber has never denied punching Depp with a closed fist during a fight where her sister was present.

The audio clip you're posting there is shortly after an argument in which Heard fled from Depp, slammed a door behind her, he forced the door open while she was still behind it, and the door hit her toes, which resulted in her hitting Depp. In the clip, Depp sarcastically asks, twice, "how are you toes?" in a babying voice. I note that this was removed from the edited clip that was illegally leaked to the press by Waldman (for the purposes of contaminating a jury no less!)

This pattern remains consistent to this day in both of their testimony in this particular case.

Note: Many people like to claim the relationship was "mutually abusive". Mutual abuse doesn't exist according to experts in domestic violence. But in any case, if we accept that Depp was abusive to Heard, then clearly she did not defame him. It doesn't even need to extend to physical abuse, as aggressively throwing shit around, slamming things, breaking things, with the intend to intimidate, is a abuse, and we literally have video footage of Depp doing exactly this.

2) "He didn't start the smear campaign"

Fundamentally, this argument only works if you believe Amber Heard getting a restraining order is a "smear campaign". She did not speak to the press about what had happened. Indeed, the specific details of what happened only came out after Depp sued her. Outside of the joint statement from the divorce, Depp made a passing reference on a podcast about surviving domestic abuse, and then she wrote the op-ed. The op-ed does not name Depp by name and does not detail the particulars of what happened.

So what kind of smear campaign is this?

If she wanted to smear Depp in the op-ed, she would have mentioned his name, she would have detailed instances of her abuse. But the op-ed was practically ghost-written by the ACLU. ACLU's purpose for commissioning and placing the op-ed was to capitalise off Heard's upcoming Aquaman to solicit charitable donations. So the entire PURPOSE of the op-ed had nothing to do with Depp.

To say that she ran a smear campaign requires you to instead look at indirect evidence. Specifically, the leaked video of Depp going into a rage, and the tip-off the press got about her restraining order. The former could well have been leaked by Heard, but there is no-one that has testified that they know this to be the case. I don't believe Heard has ever been questioned about leaking this on the stand, which is interesting. The tip-off of the restraining order is an interesting one. The "tell the world" audio clip implies mutual suspicion on both parts as to this, with Johnny even saying, "Let me talk to the fucking team".

Context:

I think it's reasonable to say that they weren't aware of what their team was doing, and each blamed the other when details leaked to the press. It is telling that once the divorce was finalised, nothing further leaked to the press, even though subsequent court cases have revealed they both had a decent chunk of evidence. I will note that Depp pretty much replaced his entire team around this point, sued his former agents, sued his former attorney, got sued by his former bodyguards, etc.

So anyway, in the "smear campaign", Heard:

Files a restraining order, doesn't speak to the press.

Files for divorce, and eventually they both release a joint statement.

Makes a passing comment in a podcast (which doesn't mention Depp or any specific allegations).

Writes an op-ed two years later (which doesn't mention Depp or any specific allegations).

And that's it.

In contrast, Waldman speaks to the Daily Mail, various youtubers/content creators, commissions a bot army, illegally leaks (edited!) evidence to the press. Hmmm.

3) The money.

This issue was raised on appeal and dealt with by the two Lord Justices who reviewed the appeal application and held an oral hearing.

First, some context.

Why does it matter what Heard did with the money? What relation does that have to allegations of battery?

The crux of Depp's entire case is the "hoax theory". The Lord Justices surmise as follows:

"The background to the application for permission to adduce further evidence is the

belief expressed by Mr Depp that Ms Heard had in the course of their marriage

generated various pieces of evidence – texts, e-mails and photographs – showing him

in a bad light so that she could deploy them in order to obtain a favourable financial

settlement in the event of a divorce. In his witness statement and his oral evidence he

referred to the evidence in question as a “hoax” and her motive as being to compile an

“insurance dossier” (i.e. against the breakdown of the marriage): we will call that the

“hoax/insurance thesis”. Underlying that thesis was a belief that Ms Heard had married

him, as he put it in his witness statement of 12 December 2019, “with the agenda … to

progress her own career and/or to benefit financially” and “to take from me everything

worth taking” – in short, that she was a gold-digger, which is how he described her to

a friend in a contemporary text."

I want to pause for a second before I actually address your point.

So, in Depp's version of events,

Heard married Depp with the sole purpose of collecting evidence against him and ruining him in divorce. This is her motivation for lying.

So, in 2013, when Amber starts texting people in her life about Depp turning abusive and hitting her, she was orchestrating a hoax that would last years.

When she talks to their marriage counsellor about the abuse in the relationship (and the counsellor notes that it was Depp who introduced violence to it), she is furthering the hoax.

Now, this entire idea is utterly ridiculous. In a previous thread, you said, "Have you heard the claims she's making?" To which I have to say, they're much more convincing than this Gone Girl fanfiction. I won't even go into the absurd claim that Heard severed Depp's finger by throwing a bottle at him, and then Depp immediately began using that finger to paint misogynistic nonsense on the walls of their hotel room in a mixture of blood and paint, before passing out, and then waking up to text practically everyone he knows (including his doctor) that he ended up cutting his own finger off on a bender and that he really should get sober.

But outside of just the common sense implausibility of what is clearly a paranoid delusion of a junkie,

A) In 2016, when Heard's friend Io called the cops... Heard and the team cleaned the apartment, and Heard refused to co-operate with the police when they arrived. By their own testimony, Heard was un-co-operative. In her own words to Johnny in the same audio recording mentioned above, "I did not call the cops, and I did not give them any statement when they came, I was trying to protect you". This is a very poor way of going about a hoax. Remember that Depp wasn't even present when the cops arrived. She could have told them anything which would bolster her hoax. Instead she refused to co-operate and she refused to make a statement.

B) Heard was entitled to far more than she got during the divorce settlement and in fact waived much of what she was entitled to. Of the residue, she pledged the rest to charity. These are two separate statements, lets deal with them in turn. Firstly, there is contemporaneous correspondence from Heard's divorce attorney to Heard trying to double-confirm that Heard isn't interested in the back-end of [whatever film], stressing the point that she is 100% entitled to this money. We also know that Vanessa Paradis received $100m when she divorced Depp (Depp later refers to her in his text messages as a "French extortionist ex-cunt" and a "withering cunt", it almost sounds like he considers a gold-digger, but anyway). Heard's claim in this case is that Heard was entitled to at least $30m, which she waived. I don't know what the basis of this claim is.

The second claim is that she pledged the rest to charity. So, is this consistent with the actions of a gold-digger?

No, clearly.

So the rebuttal by Depp's team has been, "well she didn't donate all that money to charity", meaning she kept some for herself, meaning she did gain financially from the divorce even though she claimed not to. But that ignores the fact that she could have claimed far more money if she wanted to, and she didn't have to pledge any of it to charity if she didn't want to. But lets ignore that for a second.

Lets talk about the pledge.

Lets be clear here about what was pledged and how it was pledged. The Justices find that,

"[documents produced by Depp's team via subpoena] show that ... Ms Heard has pledged $3.5m to the ACLU, payable over ten years from 2016 and appears also (though this is not quite so clear) to have pledged the same amount to the CHLA"

Of those, at the time of the documents received,

"The only amounts that the evidence which we have seen clearly shows that she has paid are $100,000 to the CHLA and $450,000 to the ACLU. The documents refer to some other substantial payments associated with her, though not clearly donated by her; but even if these are taken into account the total is under $2m"

So we see that the pledge was for a period of ten years, payable in instalments, and some money had already been donated.

Team Heard contends that once legal proceedings were initiated in 2018, Heard was unable to continue payments, although she has every intention to fulfil the pledge eventually. Both charities seem happy with this.

One point of contention is Heard's use of the word "donate" rather than "pledge". However, I am told that many people use this word interchangeably. I am told this by people who work for charities and who solicit donations.

The second is that it was Team Depp's belief that the idea that Heard had donated the entirety of her divorce settlement was an important element of the judge's reasoning when it came to determining whether or not Heard was a gold digger.

The Lord Justices rejected this on a number of fronts. Firstly, that the "gold-digger" characterisation fell flat on multiple grounds even before we got to the donation (which I have also laid out for you), secondly, that in the case, Depp's barrister intentionally stepped away from the "hoax theory"/"gold-digger" argument, and so it was not considered fundamental to the case, and thirdly, just as it had limited relevance in the initial case, if they were to go to appeal, whether or not Heard donated the money would have no material relevance to the argument of whether or not Depp abused Heard. The hoax theory just does not hold up, and so debunking it does not rely on the proceeds of the divorce.

You can read this all for yourself here:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Depp-approved-for-hand-down.pdf