In his second day of testimony during his $50 million defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard, Johnny Depp told a Fairfax County jury Wednesday that Heard’s accusations that he physically abused her were not only false, they resulted in him losing “everything.”
“When the allegations were rapidly circling the globe, telling people that I was a drunken, cocaine-fueled menace who beat women — suddenly, in my 50s — it’s over. You know, you’re done,” Depp said. “I’ll carry that for the rest of my days. It never had to be that way. It never had to happen. And I don’t quite understand why it did in the way that it did.”
Depp, 58, sued Heard, 35, for defamation after she wrote a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post in which she called herself a victim of domestic abuse. (In May 2016, Heard filed for divorce and a restraining order, alleging that Depp had physically abused her.) Depp said the op-ed damaged his career and reputation; Heard countersued him for $100 million for defamation after his lawyer called her claims a hoax.
Toward the end of a long day on the stand, Depp’s attorney Jessica Meyers finished her questioning, leaving about 20 minutes for Heard’s lawyer, Ben Rottenborn, to start his cross-examination. Rottenborn pulled up a photo of a print version of Heard’s op-ed.
“This is what you’re suing her over, correct?” Rottenborn asked, making the point that Depp’s lawsuit is specifically about the op-ed, not accusations Heard made in the past.
“I’m suing her over...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...