Thread by @nickwallis

This was the line at Fairfax County Court for #DeppvHeard this morning at just gone 7am. There are no journalists in the main court today. People have been queuing overnight.

Court began at 9am. I had UK TV news duties to attend to regarding the first hour of evidence, and I am now catching up, whilst sitting outside court 5J with the other journalists.

You can watch the live feed either by watching the E! news youtube TV feed which shows evidence as it comes up:



OR the Law and Crime feed which mainly focuses on Depp and Heard in split screen.



#DeppvHeard

AH started the day saying that the first act of violence against her was in 2012, not 2013 as she had previously stated. She says that this was because she had a faulty memory of it and wanted to believe the violence started later.

Also says police had been called...

… several times, as early as 2011.

She says she included two or three acts of violence for her TRO in 2016, and there were 14 acts of violence and three sex attacks listed for the London trial. She finally put everything together from her therapists notes, her diary and...

… recollection in Feb this year in an “interrogatory” under oath and this was supplied to Depp’s legal team. She said by the end of their relationship was “almost normal.”

Says they back to record their conversations therapeutically to try to get to the heart of...

… their communication issues.

Says that when she is heard in one recording saying “Couch!” repeatedly, it is an agreed safe word.

We are shown two pictures of the scars on AH’s arm after the Australia incident. AH says they happened in Australia when she was being abused by JD.

AH is asked why she was happy to go back with JD to the same house in Australia where she was allegedly abused.

“Home is not the problem” says AH explaining JD was sober during that time and they were very happy “It was very different”

In 2015 we see her on the red carpet promoting Magic Mike XXL with scars on her arm.

We go to the Orient Express trip in 2015 where AH says JD tried to strangle her in a sleeper car, slamming her up against the wall. He rips his shirt off and ties it round her neck she says she passed out and woked up with the shirt knotted round her neck.

We go to a recording where AH is asking JD to stop recording her. He tells her to “shut the fuck up"

We go to Aug 2015. AH wanted to work on a show with James Franco. She says JD “didn’t want me to work” and was already unhappy with her filming of London Fields. There was a sex scene in the movie which they filmed with a body double without her permission. JD saw a preview...

… with AH in JD’s Chateux in France. She says he hit her in an argument after seeing it thinking it was her and that she had broken their no sex scene agreement.

Talks about how JD allegedly would injure himself during their arguments, including once stubbing a cigarette out on himself whilst screaming at her.

We go to the audio where AH is having a go at JD about his drinking. He wants to go downstairs for a drink at a bar. She says each time this happens he can disappear for days. They talk about how much he vomits, he is not aware of this.

We go to the audio where AH admits hitting JD and starting a physcial fight and calls him a baby for walking away.

AH is asked to explain this. She says it refers two different events in which she used “reactive violence” - she says it was a fight he started, but she was trying

… to take responsibility for her own actions.

[I’ll try to transcribe the whole answer in my newsletter tonight]

Talks about another conversation in which she talks about taking responsibility for her share of the relationship, but

“No matter what I did, he still hit me"

Talks about Thanksgiving 2015 with JD and Marilyn Manson - says they were disappearing a lot to do cocaine. It ends in a fight. He hurls a vintage decanter at her which misses her head but hits a piece of art instead.

We see a photo which AH says was taken after JD had held her down and repeatedly punched her in the head.

Says in Jan 2016 JD’s mental health was deteriorating and he was hallucinating, talking to people in the room who weren’t there - erratic, irrational and not connected to reality.

Says by Feb 2016 he would think things had happened when they hadn’t. They would happen during one argument and then he’d bring them up in another argument. We see the cupboard-smashing Sweetzer video again. AH says she recorded this because she was “afraid, it was scary..."

“I was scared he wouldn’t remember”

We move on to the 30th birthday incident in 2016. AH says JD turns up v late and says when the guests have gone he turns on her. They start pushing each other. He throws a magnum of champagne...

… through a piece of art in their bedroom.

He throws her phone out into the street so she does the same to his.

The row continues and the fight turns physical.

Depp was due to come to the hotel at Coachella.

The poo incident is blamed on Boo. He was left in the bed whilst AH was packing.

AH flatly denies any prank on JD, directly contradicting Starling Jenkins (JD’s driver) evidence that the poo was a prank gone wrong.

Says she was never alone with Starling Jenkins whilst on the Coachella trip.

[morning recess break]

April 21 - May 21 AH says she had no physical contact with JD

We go to the NYC Met Gala in 2016. AH attended on her own after a no-show from JD. Got chatting with Elon Musk. Made friends.

We go to Nurse Erin Falati’s notes which state that AH took drugs on 11 May 2016 with a...

… high profile male acquaintance. AH says this is wrong. She is taken through NEF’s notes and says a lot of it is wrong.

We get to the alleged phone-throwing incident during the conversation with iO T-W. Afterwards she alleges he taunts her...

Saying “Let me see how bad I hurt you this time"

The police were called. AH panicked and called her attorney.

She then called a domestic relations attorney on the advice of her attorney.

She refused to co-operate with the police on the advice of her attorney.

We go to a series of photos.

AH says photos were taken before and after the police arrived.

These were taken, says AH that night.

Same with these two. These photos were taken by Rocky Pennington. The police were either coming or had even arrived when these photos were taken.

There are more… many of these, says AH’s attorney, were shown to the two LAPD officers during their deposition. They said they just saw redness when they were shown the pics (the LAPD concluded it was a verbal fight).

AH says she did not want to speak to the LAPD when they arrived. Because she wanted to protect JD, did not want him to be arrested. Did not want it to come out.

There is a long sequence of photographs taken after this incident allegedly showing damage to the penthouses at the ECB.

They are slowly being entered into evidence.

AH talks about being taken aside by the female LAPD officer but did not co-operate whilst RP’s partner JD walked the cops through the apartment. AH says she didn’t finger JD because she did not want him arrested.

After the cops left they cleared up the PH and then another...

… set of cops arrived. AH was surprised, they didn’t do a walk through. Says she didn’t need to co-operate with them. Did not give them JD’s name.

We are shown a text sent to AH by JD in the early hours of the morning after. It references the permanent end of their relationship. AH is asked if divorce had been discussed the previous evening. She says JD was only interested in talking about poo.

AH says afterwards they speak on the phone and JD apologises for hurting her.

But AH says that by then (late May 2016) she had made up her mind and filed for divorce “I knew if I didn’t l’d likely not literally survive… I was so scared that it was going to end really badly...

… for me… the violence was now normal and not the exception.”

She is asked why she filed for a TRO “I wanted to change my locks. I wanted a good night’s sleep. Security would always let him into the house whenever he asked them… no matter how much I begged them not to let him

… in when he was mad or drunk or high…. I was losing hair, I was losing weight… I had shingles. I couldn’t sleep… I had panic attacks all the time. I was falling apart. I was scared."

AH says JD had warning about the TRO - her counsel was in communcation with his.

She testified, and “sat there and cried”

These photos were taken at the courthouse. Says she was not wearing any make-up.

She says when she arrived at court it was quiet, but when she left she was surrounded by photographers shouting horrible things at her.

Then a long discussion about AH’s make up regime after allegedly being beaten. She said that she had some make up she used as a “bruise kit"

[We break for lunch. Worth pointing out just in case anyone is completely new to this case Johnny Depp vehemently denies ever harming AH in any way. He says he was the victim in their relationship.]

You are up to date - court starts for the post-lunch session at 1.40pm ET. This is the report I did for @5_News earlier today

https://twitter.com/5_News/status/1526251025648205826

Btw if you want to sign up to my newsletter which I’ll send you at the end of each court day, you can subscribe for a small donation here:

reportingdeppvheard.net/newsletter/

Court is back in session. We are taken a phone call between JD and AH from June 2016 in which AH says she is not lying or a gold-digger.

AH says JD said he would ruin her and end her career. She says she wanted him to call the dogs off.

We go to another recording in which AH details the corroborating evidence she says she has about being abused.

In court AH says she was begging him not to have to do this - she says she was trying to explain to him that there were photos, testimonies, pictures of her with injuries and she shouldn’t be painted as a liar.

We go to another audio recording in which AH says she doesn’t want to be a victim, but not to call her a liar, because she is “walking proof” of his abuse. AH is getting v upset in the witness box listening to these tapes.

Another tape in which JD says: “Do you believe I’m and abuser” and AH says she does, she mentions the months May, December and April. Asked in court why she says that on the tape AH says she was listing the times he’d beaten her up that he knew about.

There was a mediation meeting AH and JD in July 2016. AH says JD admitted leaking bad PR into the media about AH. JD said he would back off doing it if she dropped all charges and went on tour with him in the tour bus.

AH says people were turning on her. Losing commercial...

… oppportunities etc

AH is asked about Christian Carino and her relationship “he was a kind of mutual friend between Johnny and I”

AH says CC brokered a meeting to get her to call off the PR campaign. She says she had no desire to rekindle their marriage.

AH says Ed White had no role in negotiating the divorce (which appears to contradict his evidence).

AH says all she wanted was a joint statement. Asked why she took $7m she says she had to take a number and it was far less than they were offering and that she gave it to charity.

Asked why she pledged to$3.5m to LA childrens’ hospital and and the same to the ACLU.

Says she volunteered at the hospital and she admired the ACLU. Says she paid over time because she was receiving the money over time and there were tax benefits to doing so.

Said she was continually giving money up till the point JD sued her.

Says that Elon Musk made a $500k to both LA and ACLU in her name in 2017.

AH admits she has not fulfilled her pledge to either charity. Says its because JD sued her for $50m in March 2019.

Starts to say she’s spen $6m of her own money, but then is cut off by JD’s lawyer. Both attorneys are at the judge’s bench discussing this now.

Says she fully intends to fulfill her pledges - just wants JD to stop suing her so she can.

Taken to the joint separation agreement statement. Says the highlighted bit in purple meant “everything” to her. It was him acknowledging that she did not make false allegations. She was being called a liar and a gold-digger and this was him signing up to the fact she wasn’t.

Says that post-divorce she had to try very hard to hold on to her career. Lost lots of jobs. She got into justice league with an Aquaman option. Through hard work she started to get more work. She was getting her career back. Aquaman was DC’s highest ever grossing movie.

She played “Mera” - the female lead opposite Jason Momoa.

AH asked why she did the WaPo op-ed. She believed in some of the causes the op-ed was trying to highlight. She’d just become an ACLU ambassador and wanted to lend her voice to a great cause.

AH says the ACLU drafted the piece. That she did not want JD named or referenced. Wanted to highlight legislative reform and the wider cultural conversation around gender issues. Says she was happy to weigh in about the experience of coming forward against someone more...

… powerful.

AH says she was not trying to boost her sales for Aquaman. But lending her name during the publicity for the movie might add attention to the op-ed issue.

AH says she sought the advice of her attorney before the op-ed was published as she didn’t want any legal problems.

Said she didn’t want JD to retaliate against her and quite literally prove the point of her piece.

AH’s attorney was Eric George who represented her in a litigation of London Fields when they put a sex scene in that she didn’t know about.

Said she thought Eric George was a great attorney and she trusted him. Said she followed all of his advice. All the edits he suggested. Did not ignore any of his advice.

The court is shown the headline of the piece. Says it was nothing to do with her and that the words are not in the article.

Says the first time she became aware of it was “during this litigation”. She is shown the paper version of the op-ed. Said she took no part in the headline, but was very proud of the paper version and had it framed.

This is AH’s tweet. AH is asked to explain to the jury what a tweet is.

Then says she might not have even been aware of the title of what she was retweeting and that she’d never typed the words.

AH says every word of the op-ed is true. She is being asked to explain the paragraph in purple.

Says it is because that’s what happened. She got a TRO in 2016 and walked out into a “sea of media” and got two years of vitriol from the media and JD supporters...

… in retaliation for having done so.

AH says the decision-makers in her industry were dropping her and she gets harassed on a daily basis - “death threats”. The op-ed is not about JD. It’s about what happened to her...

… after JD. The only one, she says, who made it about him was JD himself.

[We finally go to the counter-claim based on three statements made by JD”s former attorney, Adam Waldman]

8 April 2020 Daily Mail article:

AH says it is a false statement. To call it fake or to say she’s harming JD and the public - to says it’s a hoax - what she’s lived through….
She didn’t speak about sex abuse in her marriage. AW put that out into the world. Not only...

… uses that against her, but says it’s a hoax.

We go to 28 April 2020 piece in the Mail Online:

AH says it “couldn’t be more false” and “every part of it false”

I didn’t rough up the place I CLEANED up the place.

She didn’t call the police, she didn’t call 911…

… she was trying to protect JD that night, not harm him.

24 June 2020 DM online:

AH says it is false because JD’s abuse of AH is “real”. Can’t believe that through a lawyer JD is taking the position that this was an elaborate hoax. She lived it. She has mountains of evidence or proof.

AH asked how her reputation was
doing before these statements. Says it took hard work, but she was getting her life back on track. She had a big movie success, got onto a TV series she’d been attached to for a while. Was waiting for Aquaman 2 schedule from Warner Bros.

Doing lots of charity work and was in a global campaign for a beauty brand. “The trajectory was positive”.

Says she was dropped by L’Oreal after the AW quotes. Was dropped from publicity for The Stand. Communication on Aquaman 2 halted.

AH explaining her contract re Justice League and Aquaman. Her fee was small to start then increased per film.

She got $1m+ box office bonuses for Aquaman.

She got $2m for Aquaman 2

Got a L’Oreal contract on 25 April 2018 for 2 years then it was extended for three months, then again for 20 months, but she’s only done one event, but no material was used from it.

Says all her promotional work for The Stand TV series including a magazine cover was pulled.

She was paid $200k per ep for that.

Has done one film in Guatemala since AW’s articles. It does not have distribution. Got $65k for it. Fought to stay in Aquaman 2.

She lost lots of scenes. It was very pared down.

AH is asked how AW’s statements affected her. She says they make her relive her trauma, things she has narrowly survived, embarrassing intimate details made public and have them every day used against me to call me a liar.

“It’s torture… I’m in so much pain, emotionally… I just wanted him to leave me alone… i have to be here today… it makes me have to speak to the most horrifying things i have lived through. It’s torture. It’s torturous…. I want to move on with my life. I want him to leave me

.. alone.”

[direct examination finishes. there is a break until 3.25pm. my batteries are dying on my laptop and I did not bring a plug adapter today]

I’ll detail the start of my cross in my newsletter tonight. You can watch it live here:

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