Opening Statement — Defendant

MR. ROTTENBORN: Yes, Your Honor.

MR. ROTTENBORN: May I approach?

MR. ROTTENBORN: Good morning, everyone. My name is Ben Rottenborn, and together with Elaine and Adam, I represent Amber Heard. In a few minutes, Elaine will get up here and she'll introduce you to Amber, and she will address the allegations that you just heard in Mr. Chew and IO Ms. Vasquez's opening statement. And she'll explain to you why all those inflammatory things are things that are designed to mislead you. Mislead you from the truth. She'll explain to you what the evidence will show. And that's something that we're going to focus on in this trial. Not attempts to distract you.

MR. ROTTENBORN: We're going to focus on the evidence. Not what we wish the evidence showed. Not some crazy conspiracy theories, but what the evidence and the facts actually show.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And as you assess the evidence in this trial, I would ask that you keep one question in mind, above all else, which is this: Why are you here? What are you being asked to decide? You're being asked to decide a very simple question, and that question is, were the words that Amber used in the December 18th, 2018 opinion piece, that was published in the Washington Post, protected, free speech under the First Amendment or not? That is the question. And that's what you're being asked to decide.

MR. ROTTENBORN: At the end of the trial, the judge will explain to you what the law is on defamation. And what Mr. Depp's burden is to prove in order to establish defamation. And she'll tell you a lot of things about the law. But among them, she will tell you that Mr. Depp will have to prove that the words Ms. Heard used were about him and that they were false. And if he can't do that, and if he can't meet the other elements of the claim, then he loses that claim And he can't do that. He can't come close to doing that And for that reason, you're going to hear, in this trial, Mr. Depp's team is going to make it about trying to distract you from that very simple question. Mr. Depp's team is going to try to tum this case into a soap opera. Why? I'm not really sure. Because the evidence isn't pretty for Mr. Depp. It's not. You're going to see who the real Johnny Depp is, behind the red carpets, behind the fame, behind the money, behind the pirate costumes, you're going to see who that man really is.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Amber is going to tell you about it. O You're going to hear who he really is from other witnesses. And you're going to hear who he really is in his own words, in the vile, graphic, terrible messages that he wrote about Amber and ways he used to describe Amber and what he wanted to do to Amber from the earliest days that they were dating, through their marriage, and after their marriage. You're going to hear about that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: But this case isn't about that. This case isn't about a day-to-day chronicle of their marriage. It's not about who's the better spouse. It's not about who you like more. It's not about which party can sling more mud. But you're going to hear a lot of that in this trial. You're going to hear that because that's what Mr. Depp wants to turn this case into.

MR. ROTTENBORN: He wants to turn this case into a six-week long, public spectacle of the most intimate aspects of their relationship and their marriage. And you know what? I'm sorry, for that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, that we're going to have to do that. I'm sorry, that you're going to have to listen to all of it. And I'm sorry, that Amber's going to have to relive that. But that's the case that Johnny Depp chose to bring. And we're not going to stand idly by and let him sling mud at our client and make inflammatory and false statements like you just heard in opening and not let those go unresponded to.

MR. ROTTENBORN: But ultimately, what this case is about, is about the First Amendment. About that December 18th, 2018 op-ed piece and whether Ms. Heard's freedom of speech in the First Amendment gives her the right to say the words that she said. That right, that freedom of speech is what Amber Heard is asking you to uphold and protect in this lawsuit.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And that's a very simple question. It's a question you can decide this afternoon, and it does not require you to stand and serve as the umpire of two movie stars' imperfect marriage. It doesn't. And so we're going to focus on those words. We're going to look at those words. And as we look at those words, I'd ask you to keep this in mind. Keep in mind what you just saw on O the screen from Mr. Chew, when he put up those words. Keep in mind what you didn't see. You didn't see the rest of the opinion piece.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And what we'd ask is that as you look at those words, that you look at them in the context of the piece in which they were written.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Now, whether you look at them individually or in the context of the piece, doesn't really matter because the words are true. But context matters. And so, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask Heather to put up the article. Put up the opinion piece, and I'm going to read that to you. And we're going to look at those 349 words in the context of what this piece was about. Because Mr. Depp's team wants to make you think that this was -- that this opinion piece was designed to destroy Johnny Depp. That this was designed to maliciously talk about him and their life together. And it wasn't. So let's take a moment to look at this. And I'm going to read it to you, and I'd ask that you follow along, if you can, but either way, let's take a look at what the piece, as a whole, says.

MR. ROTTENBORN: This is the piece that Amber wrote: "I was exposed to abuse at a very young age. I knew certain things early on without ever having to be told. I knew that men had the power, physically, socially, and financially, and that a lot of institutions support that arrangement. I knew this long before I had the words to articulate it, and I bet you learned it young too. Like many women, I have been harassed and sexually assaulted by the time I was of college age. But I kept quiet. I did not expect filing complaints to bring justice, and I didn't see myself as a victim. Then, two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out. Friends and advisers told me I would never again work as an actress, that I would be blacklisted. A movie I was attached to recast my role. I had just shot a two-year campaign as the face of a global fashion brand, and the company dropped me. Questions arose as to whether I would be able to keep my role of Mera in the movies Justice League and Aquaman.

MR. ROTTENBORN: I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.

MR. ROTTENBORN: "Imagine a powerful man as a ship, like the Titanic. That ship is a huge enterprise. When it strikes an iceberg, there are a lot of people on board desperate to patch up holes, not because they believe in or even care about the ship, but because their own fates depend on the enterprise.

MR. ROTTENBORN: In recent years, the Me Too movement has taught us about how payoff like this works, not just in Hollywood but in all types of institutions, workplaces, places of worship, or simply, in particular, communities. In every walk of life, women are confronting these men who are buoyed by social, economic, and cultural power. And these institutions are beginning to change.

MR. ROTTENBORN: "We are in a transformative political moment. The president of our country has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual misconduct, including assault and harassment. Outrage over his statements and behavior has energized a female-led opposition. Me Too started a conversation about just how profoundly sexual violence affects women in every area of our lives. And last month, more women were elected to Congress than ever in our history, with a mandate to take women's issues seriously. Women's rage and determination to end sexual violence are turning into a political force.

MR. ROTTENBORN: We have an opening now to bolster and build institutions protective of women. For starters, Congress can reauthorize and strengthen the Violence Against Women Act. First passed in 1994, the act is one of the most effective pieces of legislation enacted to fight domestic violence and sexual assault. It creates support systems for people who report abuse, and provides funding for rape crisis centers, legal assistance programs and other critical services. It improves responses by law enforcement and it prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ survivors. Funding for the act expired in September and has only been temporarily extended.

MR. ROTTENBORN: "We should continue to fight sexual assault on college campuses, while simultaneously insisting on fair process for adjudicating complaints. Last month, Education Secretary Betsy De Vos proposed changes to Title IX rules governing the treatment of sexual harassment and assault in schools. While some changes would make the process for handling complaints more fair, others would weaken protections for sexual assault survivors. For example, the new rules would require schools to investigate only the most extreme complaints, and then only when they are made to designated officials. Women on campuses already have trouble coming forward about sexual violence, why would we allow institutions to scale back supports?

MR. ROTTENBORN: "I write this as a woman who had to change my phone number weekly because I was getting death threats. For months, I rarely left my apartment, and when I did, I was pursued by camera drones and photographers on foot, on motorcycles and in cars. Tabloid outlets that posted pictures of me spun them in a negative light. I felt as though I was on trial in the court of public opinion, and my life and livelihood depended on myriad judgments far beyond my control I want to ensure that woman who come forward to talk about violence receive more support. We are electing representatives who know how deeply we care about these issues. We can work together to demand changes to laws and rules and social norms, and to right the imbalances that have shaped our lives.

MR. ROTTENBORN: I know that was a lot. But that is the central issue in this case. Are those words that Amber wrote, are those protected by the First Amendment? And the answer is, very clearly, yes.

MR. ROTTENBORN: So, let's talk about that article for a minute. First of all, the article doesn't mention Depp by name. It never once contains his name in that article. It is not about Amber's O relationship with Mr. Depp. There are no details of any abuse in that article. The article is about proposed legislation and strengthening of government laws and policies designed to protect abuse victims and people who report abuse. That's what the article's about.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And it was written in the midst of a social movement in which the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, asked Amber to use her platform to speak on these important issues. And that's what she did.

MR. ROTTENBORN: To do so, she drew on her experiences as someone who had reported domestic abuse. there's no question, there is no dispute, that she And did, in fact, report domestic abuse in 2016. Depp's side admits that. She talked about her negative personal experiences and her reactions and opinions after being someone in Hollywood who reported abuse, and the consequences that flowed from that. She talked about what she experienced in the days and months following reporting that abuse. That's what the article is about.

MR. ROTTENBORN: The article isn't about Johnny Depp. The article is about the social change for which she is advocating and that the First Amendment protects. And, so, I hope you remember, as this case goes on, that you saw, from Mr. Chew, only the three statements in isolation, because they want you to forget that. They don't want you to pay attention to what the article is about.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Now, if it had been Amber's intention to use this article to detail the abuse that she suffered, and that you'll hear about over the course of this trial believe me, the article would have looked very, very different. She could fill a book with those details. She probably would have started out by calling out Mr. Depp by name. She probably wouldn't have published it in the Washington Post. She would have described, in great detail the man who has described himself, the violent side of himself, as the monster. That's what she would have done. The monster. She would have told you about the monster.

MR. ROTTENBORN: But she didn't. That wasn't the point of this article. And she was careful to avoid O that, even having her lawyer review the article to make sure that it was okay. And she relied on that lawyer's advice, and you'll hear testimony on that during the trial.

MR. ROTTENBORN: But because Johnny Depp brought this case and asked for it, all of that is going to come out. Just know that Amber Heard never wanted to unearth, for the public, who the real Johnny Depp is. But that's going to come out over the course of this trial.

MR. ROTTENBORN: I would like you to also take into consideration who isn't here today. You don't see the Washington Post sitting here, as a defendant, in this courtroom Depp didn't sue the Washington Post. He had no interest in doing that. He only sued Amber. He could have sued the Washington Post, they published the article, but he didn't.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And he chose to bring Amber to court here in Virginia, where she has no ties, has never lived, he's never lived, where they never spent any time, because he wanted to make her life hard. He wanted to ruin her life. He wanted to destroy her. That's what he did.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And I wish I could say that that's surprising. It's certainly disturbing, but it's not surprising, because the evidence will show that, for years, all Mr. Depp has wanted to do was humiliate Amber, to haunt her, to wreck her career. That's what the evidence will show, in his words, that's what he wanted. But he made a mistake bringing this case in Virginia. Because you're the people who are going to hear this case, a qualified, prepared jury who respects the First Amendment.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And with that, even though we've looked at the article as a whole, I would like to spend a few minutes looking at the individual statements that were made, just as Depp's side showed you, because I think it's important to do that as well.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Can we pull up slide 1, please.

MR. ROTTENBORN: "Then, two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out."

MR. ROTTENBORN: There's absolutely nothing false about that statement. First of all, the evidence will show that Amber did suffer domestic abuse at the hands of Johnny Depp. And it took many forms. Physical sure. But also emotional, verbal psychological abuse. That's all domestic abuse that she suffered at his hands. So that's the truth.

MR. ROTTENBORN: But what else is the truth is that on May 27th, 2016, two years before this opinion piece was published, Amber walked into a courtroom in California with bruises on her face that were given to her by Johnny Depp on that incident on May 21st, 2016, that Elaine's going to tell you more about, that absolutely were given to her and she took out a domestic violence restraining order that she obtained from the court in California to protect herself.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And she was, of course, a public figure. She was a movie star. She didn't want the paparazzi, the press photos. She got those, of course. Who wants to be photographed with a bruised face walking out of court? She didn't want that. And the evidence will show that. But she was a public figure, and two years before she wrote this article, she was a public figure representing domestic abuse. That is 100 percent true. And try as he might to take it away, Amber's freedom of speech gives her the right to say that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Can we pull up slide 2, please.

MR. ROTTENBORN: This is the second statement, "I have a rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse."

MR. ROTTENBORN: Once again, that statement is 100 percent true. Amber did accuse Johnny of abuse, and she saw how he was protected at the same time that her career took a downturn and that he did everything that he could to try to wreck her career, as the evidence will see. That she accused him of abuse, that statement is true.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You don't need to relive every intimate detail of their marriage. You don't need to decide what happened on any individual day of O their marriage to determine that the First Amendment protects that statement because it is true.

MR. ROTTENBORN: He wants you to forget that. Don't take the bait.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Let's pull up the third statement, please.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Now, this statement was in the headline of the online edition of the article. "I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change."

MR. ROTTENBORN: The undisputed evidence in this case will be that Amber did not write these words, did not review these words, did not approve these words. That's how op-eds work She wrote the article, but she didn't write this headline. And for that reason, that reason alone, it's not defamatory.

MR. ROTTENBORN: But here's the thing, like the first two statements, tragically, it's true. Amber did suffer sexual violence at the hands of Depp. And Ms. Vasquez tried to minimize that and tried to make you think that it's all made up. But it's not. You will hear, in the most graphic and horrifying terms, about the violence that she suffered. You'll hear that straight from her. She will get on the stand and she will tell you that. It happened. And by taking out that domestic violence restraining order, by obtaining that from the court, she did speak out against it, and all the other abuse that she suffered.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And she said enough is enough, I need to protect myself She didn't want to do that. She didn't want to be forced to get that restraining order, but she did. She spoke out against the abuse by. 362 doing that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And the evidence will show that she did face our culture's wrath, perhaps demonstrated more clearly by the fact that she's here today facing the lawsuit brought by an obsessed ex-husband hell bent on revenge. That's why she's here. That's why she's facing our culture's wrath.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And as you consider whether these statements are true, l ask you to keep this in mind as well. The evidence will show that in May of 2016, when she obtained the restraining order, Mr. Depp never denied the allegations. In fact, he signed the statement that Amber hadn't made any false statements for financial gain. He signed a statement saying she hadn't made any false statements. And you'll see that in evidence in this trial.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And it was only two years later, as his career was in free fall and her career was taking off, that he pounced, that he chose to bring this lawsuit After saying that she hadn't made false statements.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And one thing that you'll be instructed at the end of the trial, that the Mr. Depp side will try to distract you from, is that any damages that he suffered, and any defamation has to flow from that 2018 opinion piece. This case isn't 6. about the statements made in 2016, even though they're true. This case is about the December 2018 opinion piece. That's what the case is about.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And I have to say, it's pretty ironic,. it's pretty ironic that a piece that briefly discussed Amber moving on from Johnny Depp, that briefly discussed her life experiences after Johnny Depp, is the very vehicle that he uses to try to keep her from moving on. To try to keep her from living that life, rather than give her her life back Rather than take personal responsibility for his own actions. It's ironic that he uses that piece to do that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: But like I said, it's not surprising, because you will see clear and graphic evidence of his intentions dating back years

MR. ROTTENBORN: Now, in five or six weeks, Elaine or I will get up here at closing arguments and we'll remind you, .we'll remind you what this case is about. We'll remind you that this case is about one piece of paper. Amber's words in this article that wasn't.about Depp, wasn't about her marriage, wasn't about her relationship, but it was about I life after that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: It's about the freedom of speech. It's not about the soap opera that Depp will turn this case into. It's not about who you like better. It's not even about whether you agree with the words that she wrote. It's about her right to speak them.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Now, before I sit down, I'd like to briefly discuss some of the damages that Depp alleged in this case, because he can't win the case if he can't show damages. And the evidence will show that he has not suffered one cent of damages from this op-ed, not one.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Now, make no mistake, Johnny Depp's reputation is in tatters. His career is in free fall. But it's because of problems that he created. Problems that he is responsible for. And he's here in court asking you to blame Amber for them But it's not Amber's fault. They're from the choices that he made. You'll hear a lot of evidence in this trial about those choices. You'll hear evidence of crushing drug and alcohol abuse. You'll hear evidence of Depp taking more drugs than you can count. You'll hear evidence that before one of the incidents of abuse, a cross-country plane flight in May 2014 from Boston to Los Angeles, when he kicked Amber in the back on a private jet.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You'll hear evidence that he had no food for days, that he had used cocaine, that he had had half a bottle of whiskey, that he had had countless Red Bulls and vodkas, that he had taken pills, and on the plane, decided to top all that off with two bottles of champagne. You'll hear evidence of that. And he blacked out on the plane and he abused Amber, and didn't remember anything about it when he woke up.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You'll hear evidence of drug binges with his good friend, Marilyn Manson. You'll hear evidence about a three-day blackout in Australia that Ms. Vasquez tried to minimize and tell you was false. A three-day blackout in which he abused and sexually assaulted Amber all because she had the courage to confront him about his drinking. Imagine that. A concerned spouse confronts her husband about his drinking and gets rewarded with that. That is what the evidence will show. That is what happened to my client.

MR. ROTTENBORN: That three-day blackout that led her to be so in fear for her life that she barricaded herself in her room That same three-day blackout that kept him from being able to do what he was in Australia to do, which was to film Pirates of the Caribbean 5. His behavior on that trip, both before the blackout and during it, kept him from being a reliable actor. He showed up late to the set. And after that blackout, he was gone from the set for a long time. Now, he did cut off his finger, but the evidence will show my client did not do it. And just imagine this, what Ms. Vasquez is trying to get you to buy is that Amber Heard somehow developed a major league level fastball and cut off his finger with a bottle? You'll see the evidence. You'll see that that doesn't make any sense. And you'll hear from Ms. Heard's experts who testified, including orthopedic hand specialists who testified, there's no way that that happened. You'll also see pictures of what Mr. Depp did after he cut off his finger, when he dipped it in blood and paint and wrote graffiti all around the house. That's what you're going to see he did.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You're going to ask yourself, how can someone that is blacked out, how can they deny that they abused someone? How can they deny what they were told that they did?

MR. ROTTENBORN: He has no credibility when he gets up here now, in this court, and tells you he didn't do this and do that, when he was blacked out. So just remember that. Those were problems that he created.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You'll hear evidence that the same addictions that led him to abuse Amber also led to the demise of his career as an actor. Like I said, as you saw with Disney; as the evidence will show with Disney, he was unreliable as an actor, and those same self-destructive tendencies led to financial distress. Quite simply; he was running out of money, and that distress fueled his abusive tendencies toward Amber.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And it led the public, to think less and less of him. And you will see a parade of witnesses who testify in Johnny's case that all have one thing in common, they all rely on him, they're all on his payroll, for the most part, or they rely on him for some sort of luxury in their life. And you'll see that of these witnesses. So, in a lot of ways, Amber previewed the parade of witnesses when she said, in her op-ed, and I'm going to read from it and quote it here, she said, you'll remember when I said this, "imagine a powerful man as a ship, like the Titanic. That ship is a huge enterprise.

MR. ROTTENBORN: When it strikes an iceberg, there are a lot of people on board desperate to patch up holes, not because they believe in or even care about the ship, but because their own fates depend on the enterprise.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Remember that as Depp's witnesses take the stand. None of them know what happened behind closed doors between him and Amber. None of them can testify to that. Remember that these are people who care about their own financial well-being, just as was previewed in that article, and they know what happens to people that stand_ up to Depp. They know what happens because they've IO seen it. They've seen it with Amber, and they've seen it with other people in his life who had the courage to ask him to change, and who he lashed out against.

MR. ROTTENBORN: These are people who helped enable the man who describes himself as the monster.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Make no mistake, this man's poor choices have brought him to this courtroom. His own bad behavior, his own refusal to commit to sobriety, his own violence, his poor choices and the people who have spoken up against it, they're the ones that have suffered the consequences. You'll hear evidence that he fired his longtime agent, that he got rid of his business managers and his law firms that had represented him for years. And no one has suffered from his refusal to take accountability more than Amber Heard.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You'll hear evidence that two years before the op-ed, two years before that, Mr. Depp brought someone else into his life who helped convince him to blame other people. That man, Adam Waldman, who Ms. Vasquez introduces you to, had never met Mr. Depp while he was in a IO relationship with Ms. Heard, or while he was represented by his agents or his former business managers. But he convinced him that all these bad things that were happening in his life, he helped convince him of this, were other people's fault. And you'll hear evidence of that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Why didn't he take responsibility for cleaning himself up? Depp chose to blame other people. That's why we're here. And the evidence will show you, crystal clearly, that the op-ed had nothing to do with damages that he suffered.

MR. ROTTENBORN: He's going to try to make it sound like this caused him to lose Pirates of the Caribbean 6, which was a movie that hasn't been made; but that Disney wasn't going to cast him in it because of Amber's article. But there's no evidence of that. The evidence will actually show that months before the op-ed, it was reported that Disney was considering dropping him from Pirates 6. The evidence will show that Disney had a dossier that had articles from the press, had other information about Mr. Depp, and they didn't have this article, at all, in their files. It didn't register with them. Just as it didn't register with the public.

MR. ROTTENBORN: The public had known, since 2016, what Amber had to say about Johnny Depp. This didn't change any of that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: The evidence will also show that he said he would not make Pirates 6, even if Disney paid him far more money than he'd ever made on a film. That's what the evidence will show. So any damages that he suffered in his career are not because of this op-ed. And it's time to make Johnny take responsibility. To tell him, Mr. Depp, stop blaming other people for your self-created problems. To take responsibility for your own life. And it's up to you, ladies and gentlemen, to make him do that. It's up to you because you are uniquely qualified to do that. No one else has the power to do that, only you, to tell him, enough is enough. To stand up for the First Amendment. To stand up for the truth and Amber's right to speak it. Thank you.

MS. BREDEHOFT: I'm going to need to switch out.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Thank you, Your Honor.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Good morning, still. It's good to see you all again. And thank you, again, very much.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Ben told you we will be relying on the evidence, rather than the hyperbole and the personal attacks, and he was right. The evidence in this case, simply put, is overwhelming and compelling. In the six weeks, we're going to try to show you as much as we possibly can. There are many, many, many photographs. Now, you heard Ms. Vasquez try to say, oh, you can't trust those, they're not the originals. She's got that wrong. It's not from the original devices. Ms. Heard took all kinds of photographs and her friends took photographs, and all of those remained on the cloud, and all of them have been imaged, and all of them have been examined by their IT experts and they cannot discredit one photograph. When she says, oh, it's got a photo editing thing.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Well, all iPhones have the photo editing where you can make it a little lighter, little darker, you can move it to the center or not. That doesn't discredit the photographs, and we will have an IT expert who will testify all of these are legitimate, authentic photographs. Not only that, but Ms. Heard produced all of her different devices over the years, including her most recent laptop, and they were pulled from many, many sources, and all of them are identical. So if she was going to go and try to manipulate, she would have had to do it everywhere, and Ms. Heard will tell you she doesn't have that level of talent. There may be a couple of you on the jury who have that talent, but she does not have that talent. They're all very legitimate photographs. And listen carefully to the evidence from the experts and you will find every single piece is authenticated and is true. And they show bruises, and they show cuts. They show hair pulled out of her hair. They show all kinds of -- they show two black eyes when he headbutted her. Those are all going to be there.

MS. BREDEHOFT: We're also going to show you a video, and I'll talk about the time frame of it. Ms. Heard took that on her iPad, and it was one day when she was in the kitchen with Mr. Depp, and it was February 10th, 2016, and he's on a tear and he's going around yelling at her and being abusive to her and slamming the kitchen cupboards, and they're glass, and you can hear them rattling and you can hear them breaking. Then he goes over with a big glass of wine, has a huge bottle of wine, and he pours more in there. And then she said, did you drink all of that? And then he sees that she's videotaping him, and bam That's going to be a pretty graphic one for you to see. Then you're going to hear audiotapes, which are pretty significant too.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Ben told you about the May 2014 plane, Boston plane incident, we call it, where he kicked her, where he was so drunk and he blacked out. Well, Amber, audiotaped him when he went to the back of the plane and passed out and was moaning loudly. You will hear that. You will also hear some other audiotapes that are very significant. One of them in Australia, at the end of the three-day hostage situation. Apparently, Mr. Depp turned on Ms. Heard's iPhone. She was never allowed to have a password, by the way. He would never let her do that during their relationship.

MS. BREDEHOFT: But he must have inadvertently turned it on and there's five hours of audiotape. It's during the cleanup of all the broken glass and the liquor and the urine and the blood stains and everything else in that house. And you can hear his handlers talking about it. You can hear them talking about trying to find his finger. And then you can hear them say she's stone cold sober. You will hear all of that. It's very, very significant evidence.

MS. BREDEHOFT: What this is going to tell you is the story of a very different Johnny Depp. It's one who is always, always, I can't say always, because he has the charismatic side that Amber fell in love with, but he has an enormous amount of rage. You will see the medical record and hear from the psychiatrist that talked to him for a while in 2014, where he admits that he has rage, that he's like a demon, that he viewed his wife, Amber, like his mother and his sister that he hates. That's the -- that's what you will see. You will see that. And it will be fueled by the alcohol and the drugs.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Ben told you a little bit about that. You're going to see a list of his prescription drugs that his concierge doctoring team, who charged him a hundred thousand dollars a month, and have since 2014, and they are still his concierge doctors, that's the list of medications he takes in one day that they prescribe. That doesn't include the cocaine. It doesn't include the ecstasy, MDMA, the mushrooms, and all of the others.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, it's during these rages that Mr. Depp engaged in verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of Amber.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Let me introduce you to Amber, the lesser known person here. I know when we were doing the voir dire, none of you had even watched as much as three of her movies. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Amber. She's 35 years old, she's from Austin, Texas. She grew up outside of Austin, Texas. She has a daughter, Luna, who turned one last week. Amber grew up in an area, her father was a construction worker, primarily a painter, but he would break horses as part-time, they lived out on a ranch area.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Her mother, Paige, who died two years ago at age 63, dropped out of middle school to marry Amber's father. She worked for the State of Texas in Internet communications. They grew up very poor. Amber has a sister, Whitney, who's 16 months younger than her. And you will see and hear from Whitney later because, unfortunately, she also witnessed some of the abuse.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Amber rode horses with her father. She tried to work with him to help him break the horses. She remembers having a broken arm at least four times, being in casts during that time. But there are some things she learned from breaking those horses that was very significant. Her father taught her she couldn't show fear, she couldn't show pain, and she couldn't show emotion. That's how she could break those horses. It's significant for you to know that so you can understand how Amber could have remained in this relationship with Mr.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Depp for as long as she could and the dynamics of some of the abuse you're going to hear about, because that's what would be her instinct, is to stand up and not let him -- show that he's caused the pain, that he's caused the fear, that he's caused the humiliation.

MS. BREDEHOFT: You'll hear about a long line of jobs that Amber started from back at age 12, as soon as she could. Working in the a soup kitchen, well, that was volunteer, but then she took all kinds of miscellaneous jobs, lifeguard, everything else, trying to improve her. She's not somebody who had a great break. What happened was she got recognized by a Hollywood agent who expressed some interest in her. She took her $180 that she saved up and she went to L.A. That's all she had to her name. The testimony will be she worked all kind of different jobs when she was in LA, anything that she could get.

MS. BREDEHOFT: And she would go on -- but she didn't have a vehicle, so she would go on buses. She would go on up to six different auditions in one day. She would have her map and she'd have the bus and then she would just go around. She had a big sweater so she could change underneath it to whatever the role was so that she could get things. She wasn't going for, you know, famous actor roles. She was taking one-liners, she was taking extras, she was doing anything she could to make money to survive. And then you know what she did with it? She gave a bunch of it back to her parents. She started helping support them Then when Whitney graduated from high school, she brought her out to LA and put a roof over her house [sic] and put her through community college. She took care of her family with what she made.

MS. BREDEHOFT: When she met Johnny Depp in 2009, when he hired her for Rum Dairies to star across from j l l him, she felt like she was pretty successful. She had starred in some roles, she had an apartment, she had a vehicle, a Mustang. She could go to Starbucks, she could afford Starbucks. She viewed herself as doing pretty well at that point.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, during the Rum Diaries, she got to know Mr. Depp, not that she was pursuing him or anything else. She was in a long-term relationship with Tasya van Ree, and he was in a long-term relationship with Vanessa Paradis. Neither of them had any kind of romantic relationship at that time. When she departed from the Rum Diaries in 2019, Johnny started pursuing her. In fact, he sent her a number of gifts. One of them was a guitar, and she returned it. Now, two years later, fast-forward, that's when the press junket started and that's when she had to come back and meet with him and they ran on the press tours. At that point, she had ended the relationship with Tasya van Ree and he said he had ended his relationship with Vanessa Paradis. So, during the press trips, that's when they started dating and, by both accounts, fell madly in love. She loved the side of Johnny that we see in the movies.

MS. BREDEHOFT: The charismatic one, the charming one, that generous one. That's the man she fell in love with.

MS. BREDEHOFT: But, sadly, the monster came in the way. And that monster would come out when he was drinking and when he would take the drugs.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Amber will never forget the first event of abuse. She was sitting in his house in Schweitzer, on the sofa, and he was across from her, and they were talking about a tattoo that he had, that had had Winona, Winona Ryder, forever. He had altered that to "wine forever" after he broke up with Winona Ryder. An aside, he had "Slim," which was his nickname for Amber. When they broke up, he turned it to scum But at any rate, he had that on there, and Amber thought he was making a joke when he was talking about it and she laughed, and he got up and slapped her. Now, you see the rings that Mr. Depp has on. It hurts when he slaps. And she was stunned. She had no idea what to think, and she kind of laughed, thinking, well, maybe that was a joke. What just happened?

MS. BREDEHOFT: And he slapped her again. And then she just froze and just looked and then he hit her again, and this time, it knocked her right off the sofa, onto the ground. And she remembers her face was in this dirty, filthy carpet. That's what she remembered and fixated on, the dirty carpet. And she's thinking, oh, my god, I have to leave. I have to leave. But I love him. I have to leave. But I love him. And she sat there for the longest time; she laid there for the longest time. When Johnny came off the sofa, got on his knees, started crying, told her he was very, very sorry that he had done this, it would never happen again, and he said some very significant words. "I thought I had put the monster away for good." That's what he said to her that day.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Well, Amber ended up leaving that day. She went out to her car, her Mustang, and she remembers it was cold. She sat in her car for the longest time and she remembers watching her breath, because it was cold, and she was thinking, I have to leave him, but I love him. She just kept thinking that. She finally drove away. But Amber made the mistake that millions before her and millions after her have, who are victims of domestic abuse, she chose to stay and try to fix the problem and thinking that she could do that. So, she stayed.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, Amber was also -- she grew up in an abusive family. Her father abused her mother and sometimes she and Whitney. So she had that cycle in there, just as you've heard that Johnny y j y y had that cycle in his house. And so, what's the normal to them is a little bit more difficult for -- than some of us can understand.

MS. BREDEHOFT: You will hear witness -- expert witness testimony about the cycles of violence and what happens with these people and how they react, and all the dynamics of thinking they can fix them. She thought all the way through. She could fix him. If she could just get him sober and clean, then everything was going to be that wonderful side that she fell madly in love with. She kept trying, and she kept trying. She went to Al-Anon meetings; she went to therapists; she tried to do couples therapy.

MS. BREDEHOFT: You'll hear about their tape-recorded sessions to try to resolve fights or deescalate them so he wouldn't get mad at her for anything. But you'll hear that he gets mad at her for everything. He didn't want her to work. Here, she's a budding actor who wants to be out there and succeed, and he doesn't want her to take roles. He starts controlling what she wears, he starts looking at her lines when she tried out for pieces. He makes sure there weren't any romance scenes, sex scenes. He gets mad and accuses her of sleeping with every single one of her costars. It became a cycle of that, control, as well as emotional abuse, as you go.

MS. BREDEHOFT: But what's also significant in that is the property damage. And that's a hard one for Mr. Depp to be able to escape when he's claiming he's such a docile thing and it's all Ms. Heard. You're going to see pictures. He writes on mirrors, horrible things to her. Writes on lampshades, on clothing, on countertops. In Australia, when you heard Ben talk about Australia, he wrote -- the third day, as Amber comes out after she's barricaded herself and gone through a lot -- I'll back up on that in a minute. She comes out, he's got mashed potatoes spread across the top.

MS. BREDEHOFT: He's written, along the wall of the staircase, going down, all kinds of nasty things about her and Billy Bob Thornton, the last one she was a costar with. Fucking ambition and all kinds of things like that. Then he's written I on the lampshades downstairs, and then he's got more on the mirrors. And then, on top of it, you've got all the broken glass everywhere and you've got the liquor everywhere, and it's just -- and then he's urinated, tried to urinate messages to her. That's the Johnny Depp that's the other side.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, you're going to hear that Amber tried to protect him all the way through. She didn't want the public to know this. She didn't want his kids to know this. So, she didn't tell people about it.

MS. BREDEHOFT: So, let's go back. The first event that I told you about was 2011. And how do we know that it was in 2011? Because Amber was going to her therapist Bonnie Jacobs, and Bonnie Jacobs has therapy notes of her sessions with Amber. And in those therapy notes, she chronicles the first time that Amber tells her that Johnny hit her, and it goes through into 2012, 2013, 2014. And you will see, and you will hear from Bonnie Jacobs, her saying, you know, this is a cycle of violence.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Amber will testify about how Johnny would get so drunk and so drugged out that he would vomit all over himself and worse, lose control of his bowels. She would clean him up. And you'll see Bonnie Jacobs, in these notes, saying don't do that. You're enabling him Don't do it. Leave him there. But what would happen is O his handlers would, then, take care of him if she left him So that's the story you're going to hear on that.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Let me just tell you about a few of the events. I'm going to start in Australia, that's the three-day hostage. She gets there, now, you will hear Mr. Depp testify, under oath, that for 15 to 18 months before the March 2015 Australia event, when he's there filming, that he's been sober, clean and sober. Then you'll see all the text messages for the last 18 months in which he is scoring drugs, in which you'll hear testimony from people in which he's gotten drunk and, you know, taken all kinds of different drugs. The whole time. He doesn't get clean and sober. But he claims that he was clean and sober. That she came there, this is a month after they just got married. She flew in from filming The Danish Girls, she's there, and he claims he was just sitting there calmly and she was haranguing him, so he took a shot glass of vodka. And when she did -- when he did that, she got mad, took the bottle of vodka, was eight to ten feet, about where I am from you, and hurled it at him, and it happened to just take out the bottom part of his finger.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Then he says she came and burned a hole in his cheek. The testimony is going to be that he self-mutilated on a number of occasions and burned himself in the cheek and, also, cut himself But Amber never did that. And you're going to hear from the experts testifying about this finger injury and how fantastic this version is. But the other part of it was he was with Marilyn Manson for the week before, scoring on cocaine. You'll see text messages of him getting it from his handlers, the cocaine and the liquor, and you'll hear so much before that. But Amber gets there, and instead, what he does is he takes eight to ten tablets of ecstasy, almost immediately, the next three days are just a cycle of very, very, very violent activity by him. Amber keeps trying to calm him down. She tries to get him to eat. She tries to get him to sleep. She tries to do these things. And he, at times, he was delusional, paranoid, you know, he would be mad at somebody else, then he'd be mad at her.

MS. BREDEHOFT: By the way, we'll talk about the prenup, but he called her lawyer, who she had because she wanted to give him a prenup and then they got married too quickly, so she was going to give him a postnup. He called the lawyer from Australia, called her a bitch, and fired her. You'll hear the testimony from the lawyer on that.

MS. BREDEHOFT: That's the type of Johnny Depp that was there, and he didn't want the postnup, he didn't want the prenup but now he's going to tell you that it was her. You're going to hear she had a lawyer, she was cooperating completely on that.

MS. BREDEHOFT: As you go through those three days of Australia, some pretty horrendous things happened to her. He ripped off her nightgown; he had her jammed up against a bar; he has hurled bottles and bottles at her; he has dragged her across the floor on the broken bottles and the liquor; he has punched her; he has kicked her. He tells her he's going to fucking kill her and he fucking hates her. He's pounding her, and then he penetrates her with a liquor bottle.

MS. BREDEHOFT: That's the Johnny Depp that you're going to hear about in this case.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, after that, Amber goes to the airport, and what does she do? She buys a book by a psychiatrist who's talking about couples therapy. She's already trying to figure out a way to fix it again. Fix this marriage that's only a month old and her husband has just done these horrible things to her.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, we'll go back to LA. He's got to get his finger fixed, so he has to stop filming Pirates 5. They get there and there's another fight in just two weeks from there. He's still using at this point. He's still drunk. But Amber finds, on a TV screen, his monitor, she finds pictures of another woman, naked pictures of a woman, and text messages which shows that he's clearly having an affair. She gets extremely mad. Amber can be jealous too. She can get angry. She's half his age and, you know, she's defiant. We're not going to say she's perfect. She was mad as can be when she saw that, and she confronted him The two of them were screaming at each other.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, her sister Whitney happened to be in the house. She was summoned, she literally was awakened to come and try to resolve this fight between the two of them. While she's there, Johnny starts hitting Amber. Whitney ends up getting in between them, and Amber thinks that Johnny's going to push her down the stairs because he's in that position. So, Amber actually gets up and punches Johnny in the face. She'll tell you that's the only time she has ever laid one on him, you know, in an aggressive manner, but after he had already been hitting her and it's in defense of her sister. She'll admit she got him that time, and she actually did have an impact on him. She'll testify how many times they were in their fights and she said, you know, she is almost half his size, so she said if I push him, he doesn't move. He pushes me, I go flying across the room. There isn't any, you know, ability on her part to be the abuser.

MS. BREDEHOFT: What she'll also tell you is it took her a while to ever fight back. That many times before that, she would do what she did when she was breaking the horses, she wouldn't show fear, she wouldn't show pain, she would look at him, she would just be defiant, and all it would do is piss him off more.

MS. BREDEHOFT: She will tell you that she tried everything. She tried everything, you know, from trying to be nice, trying to get away from him, you know, she would throw things in his way to get him from running after her. She would try to flail back, she would use her hands and legs and she would go and try to fight. She'd run into a room, try to barricade and push his hands and everything out of there. She tried all of it. But she couldn't figure out what could get him to calm down.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Fast-forward now to the next one, and that is, I'm going to jump you up to after the stair incident and Johnny had to get surgery on his finger. That's the longest period of time he stayed sober. It was almost three months. You're going to hear that he has never gone to rehab, even though he has been a lifelong drug addict and an alcoholic, never has he gone through a rehab plan. Instead, there's twice that he went to Sinai New York hospital and did a cleansing, one time for three days and one time it was for five days. That's it.

MS. BREDEHOFT: He never made any effort, whatsoever, to get sober or stop the drugs. But this particular time, he did, for almost three months. And you'll see the text messages. We're going to take you through the whole story and all the text messages and all the emails and all the testimony that you're going to get.

MS. BREDEHOFT: So fast-forward to December 2015. That was one of the worst, Australia was pretty bad, but this one was even worse. In this particular occasion, he gets angry for some reason and he starts dragging her by her hair through the apartment, kicking her, punching her, tearing her hair out. At one point, she gets up and looks at him and he headbutts her and she gets two black eyes from it.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Then he goes and drags her up the stairs, puts her on the bed, puts his foot and knee in the back of her and he continues to punch her telling her he's fucking hating her and he's fucking going to kill her, and he's got his boot stuck in the bedframe as he's doing it. The force of what he's doing to her caused the bedframe to splinter, that's how much force. She is suffocating in the pillow and she believes, truly, she's going to die on this one. She wakes up to her friend being there. She doesn't know how long she was unconscious. She doesn't know. But Johnny was gone, at that point, and her friend is saying, are you okay? Are you okay? You'll see the pictures of all of this. You'll see the pictures of the hair, and imagine how much that must hurt. The hair is on the ground. And you'll see the picture of Amber.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Here's the ironic thing: The next day, she's got to be on the James Corden Show. And you can see the text messages. She's not sure if she can go, she's worried. She's got two black eyes; she's got a split lip; she's got bruising; she's got hair missing. But her friends rally with her. She's got a makeup artist, she's getting hair from Melanie Inglessis. She's got the best job of makeup you can imagine to get her through the James Corden Show. She does it. You'll see the pictures, the before, and you'll see them again. And that's the resilience of Amber, who says, I'm going to do this anyway.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, her friends, you're going to hear about iO Tillett Wright, he was in New York, she texted him and said, Johnny beat me up really good this time. Can you help? And he said, I was filming something, I stopped, I got the first flight out of there. I'm flying from New York back to LA. I see her on the James Corden Show, I can see the swelling because I know her well. I can see the swelling. Then he said somebody touched her and she flinched on the show. He said that's not like Amber. He got there, they hadn't cleaned up all the mess. He sees the hair, he sees the splinter, he sees all the other things. He is so upset. He was a good friend of Johnny's as well. He'll testify about all of his friendship with Johnny.

MS. BREDEHOFT: But he put his foot down on that one and said you need to have consequences, you cannot do this to Amber anymore. I am not your friend anymore.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, there are several people that were supposed to go to Johnny's island, Bahamas Island in December for Christmas. He was going to bring his two kids, he invited Amber's parents, who loved Johnny, and, unfortunately, her father used to drink and do drugs with Johnny a lot. And he was also going to take Rocky, her friend lived next door in a penthouse, and her fiance and Rocky's parents. Imagine being able to go to Bahamas Island for Christmas. What a cool thing to do. But they all were so upset what he did to Amber on December 15, they said no, we're not going. We're not going to condone this. We're not going.

MS. BREDEHOFT: But he talked Amber into going. He guilted her into going. I want you to be with my kids. Please come. I'll be better. I'm going to get better. Amber went. And then he ends up assaulting her, even there, and sexually assaulted her, even there. You'll see a video of them from the Bahamas, the parts that they stayed in on his island. And the video just conveniently leaves out the war room in the bathroom, where he committed the assault. Just goes around, makes it look like it's a one room and his kids were there and there's no way they could have done that.

MS. BREDEHOFT: You'll hear the testimony, and you'll see the pictures. Then, from then on, things really were bad for Amber, and she was really considering leaving him at this point. And she was talking to her friends and confiding, and you'll see, you know, the medical records. And in February 2016, I told you, you'll see that video, that same night before the video, he called iO Tillett Wright and left him a voicemail message that he said was just absolutely delusional. It was crazy. He was pretending like he was the property management. It was just an insane call, and then the next day, we have the picture of the video.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Then we get to April 30th -- April 21st, 2016. Amber's 30th birthday party. She was going to turn 30 the next day. Pretty big event. Her friends had a tape that they put together of everybody giving her tributes. Johnny doesn't participate. They have a dinner and a party for her that night. Johnny says, oh, I have a business meeting at 7:00 p.m I'll be there after that. What kind of business meeting do you need to have at 7:00 p.m when your wife turns 30? But that's Johnny, right? And he can't say that it was an important financial one because he fired his financial manager the month before. And as you heard from Ben, he was blaming him for all his financial problems, so he's the problem So he shows up late, drunk, drugs, and after everybody-- and he's even drinking while he's there, he's telling other_ friends, and you'll hear from them, hide the bottle from Amber, hide the bottle from Amber. When they all leave, she expresses her disappointment. He gets mad and assaults her again, including sexually assaults her. Then he goes away and he doesn't come back for a month.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, this is an important event, May 21, 2016, this is the last one, and this is the final straw that leads up to the DVTRO. The domestic violence temporary restraining order. So he says he's coming over to get some clothes, he's going to go out on tour. She says okay. He comes over and he's -- his mother died the day before, and he's already in a state, he's been drinking, he's clearly high, and he comes in and he's got on his mind this obsession that when she, on her birthday, go back to her birthday, the next day, she and her friends went to Coachella and his housekeeper had come in to clean after that, always did, and the housekeeper found some, you know, feces on the bed and had been upset about it and taken a picture and sent it to him.

MS. BREDEHOFT: So all of a sudden, a month later, he's got it in his head IO that Amber has conspired with her friends to defecate on the bed, human, not dog, even though they've got two dogs, and one of them has major problems, you'll hear about Boo and Pistol, and, somehow, Amber was doing this so he would get back there and find it, even though he had no intention of coming back, and even though the housekeeper was there. He won't get rid of it, he's just obsessed with it. Then he decided that it's IO Tillett Wright's, even though IO wasn't at the birthday party and wasn't even in town.

MS. BREDEHOFT: So, Amber gets IO on the phone, IO is in New York, and she says, this is what Johnny says. Tell him this isn't true. Tell him we don't have a conspiracy here. And IO is thinking, what? And you'll hear from IO, he'll say Amber has fecal phobia. She can't even -- you know, she's so embarrassed about that stuff, she would never conspire, never do anything like that to him. So they're kind of laughing at the absurdity of it. That was the biggest mistake. That triggered his anger. He started after her, started hitting Amber, grabbed the cell phone from her, wound it up, bashed it into her face. And you'll see the pictures, you'll see the bruises, and you'll see the form of it there.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, IO is very, very upset. He's worried because he knows about the December 15 event, and he says, Amber, get out of there, get out of there. You're safe. Get out of there. As Johnny is storming around. He calls Rocky, who lives next door, and then he calls 911. It's not clear whether Amber said call 911 or he said call 911, but they called 911. He's in New York and he's genuinely concerned for her safety. He calls 911 there. He calls his friend in LA and says, please call 911 and just tell them this so they can get somebody there, get them there fast. I don't know what's going on. The police are called twice, essentially. Here's what happens next: Johnny goes around, he trashes the apartment before he leaves. He loves to do that. You're going to hear about his penchant for that. You'll see a picture of him in the elevator afterward, leaving with his bodyguard. And he was a little agitated there. Police are called. You will see pictures of Amber with metadata on them, both before, during, and after the police officers are there.

MS. BREDEHOFT: But what happens is Amber calls her attorney, the one that she had consulted after the December 15 event, and this attorney says, if you press charges, they'll arrest him. And Amber says, I can't have that happen. I don't want his kids to know about this. I don't want the public to know. I can't have that happen. So when the police show up, she refuses to cooperate. She says, on the advice of my attorney, I'm not going to cooperate. But her friend, Rocky, whose fiance was there, Josh, at this point, he takes them around and shows one of the police officers all the property damage around the house as well. And the police officers say to him, look, she's got the red mark on there, just give us the name, we'll go get him. He says I can't. She won't let me. So, they leave.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, here's what happens and creates all of the, you know, noise here that you're going to have to deal with. So the police officers don't make an incident report. They don't take a report, they don't document the property damage. They don't document the facial damage. Instead, they go out and they write on their CAD, that's their little system in there, verbal dispute only, victim uncooperative. That's their language for we don't have to write a report. You'll see that the police officers have another one later that night, another, and they put verbal dispute only.

MS. BREDEHOFT: That's their magic language.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, that's notwithstanding what you will see in these pictures, but Amber wasn't I cooperating with them and they were quite convinced she wasn't going to. So, as many domestic violence, you know, calls that they take, they're not going to -- this is one that they figured it's gone. Now, the other police officers come two hours later. They've cleaned up the place at this point. They don't know that these police officers are arriving, but when they do arrive there, they try to discourage them from even coming in. J ash says, no, the other police officers were already here. And he says -- they said, no, we just have to see her.

MS. BREDEHOFT: They have body cams, by the way, so you'll see the body cam footage of this. So they go through and they do that. And one of the significant things is you'll see, on the CAD, that the two police officer sets are communicating with each other and the first set said, I don't think she's going to change her mind. And they know who the officers were the first time because they say Officer Saenz, you'll hear this and you'll see it in that body cam footage. They go through and everything's fine, you can see on there, and they leave.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, the reason this is so significant is what they have done with this in creating an upcoming counterclaim And what their version of the reality is, is that Amber calls the cops, then they don't see any injury, so they mess up the place, splash a little wine, then they call another set of cops.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Does that sound like the situation here? No, no. And it's really important to look at the evidence and think about this.

MS. BREDEHOFT: You'll hear from many -- actually, I don't know how many of the police officers we'll put oh, but we have, you know, between four and six LAPD police officers and experts who will say those police officers, even when she declined to cooperate, should have taken a report. They should have documented it. That was police policy.

MS. BREDEHOFT: So when faced with this big, public, you know, DVTRO and all the publicity later, now they go back to the police officers and said, hey, wait a minute, you didn't take a report. You said it was a verbal dispute only. They're stuck. If all of that is true and they admitted it was true, then they violated policy by not doing a report because they were supposed to take a report. So the police officers chose the other and said, no, there was no evidence. But you're going to watch it, you're going to see it in real time, you're going to see it on metadata. O So, Amber goes to get the DVTRO, the domestic violence TRO.

MS. BREDEHOFT: You're going to see the letter that her lawyer wrote to Johnny Depp's lawyer that week, telling them that's what she would have to -- she was going to do if -- but giving them opportunity here to be able to resolve it, to get a mediator, you know, just make sure that she's safe, that she can stay in the residence until they figure things out, that she can drive her vehicle until they figure it out, you know, some attorneys' fees. You're going to see the letter. So, they knew, and it says right in there, she's going to go in on Friday. They chose not to go. They keep saying ex parte, but they chose not to appear and they knew she was going to appear. Amber didn't call TMZ, but somebody called TMZ to take all those photos that day.

MS. BREDEHOFT: You also heard them say that all kinds of people saw Amber that week and she didn't have any bruises on her face. Well, let me show you this. This is what Amber carried in her purse for IO the entire relationship with Johnny Depp. She's an actor. Do you honestly think she would have left her apartment, ever, without makeup? Do you think that she ever would have wanted other people to see her bruises and her cuts? This was what she used. She became very adept.

MS. BREDEHOFT: You're going to hear the testimony from Amber about how she had to mix the different colors for the different days of the bruises, as they developed, and the different coloring, and how she would use these to touch those up to be able to color those. She also used concealer, foundation. You'll hear from a makeup person that Amber didn't even leave her bedroom without having foundation on. And one of the people that was at the building testified. He said she had makeup on and it would have covered that bruise. So, that's the testimony on that.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, let me talk about the divorce, just for a moment. So they go through, they have the two months of trying to resolve the divorce. Ben already told you that they signed a joint statement in which Mr. Depp admits that she did not make any of these allegations falsely and not for financial gain. But they brought up the donation, so I want to talk to you about the donations for a moment.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, here's the story, Amber didn't have a prenup, she didn't have a postnup, she was more than willing to do that, but, as I told you, Mr. Depp fired her lawyers and said only till death, that's the only way we're going to part, is through death. We don't need a postnup. We don't need a prenup. That's Johnny. It's true his advisers were all telling him, get one, and she said, I'll get one, and she hired a lawyer. But anyway, she didn't have a prenup, so what you're going to hear is that meant no matter what, whether it was abuse, adultery, irreconcilable differences, abandonment, it doesn't matter, she's entitled to 50 percent of everything during that marriage. He did Pirates 5 and did two other movies during that time, and you'll see that he made $65 million during those two years. Half of that is 32.5. Amber didn't want that.

MS. BREDEHOFT: You'll see a letter -- you'll see an email from her lawyer that she forwarded on to her agent, who became Johnny's agent later, saying I want you to sign this because you're entitled to a whole lot more than 7 million. And I don't want you to come -- basically, I don't want you to come back and sue me for malpractice. That's what her lawyer tells her. And then her lawyer says, I offered even less than they -- I got less than they offered. In other words, the 7 million was less than Mr. Depp's team was even offering to her. And she said, I just want to be left alone.

MS. BREDEHOFT: I just want to get out of this marriage. I don't want -- I'm not doing this for financial gain. So, she didn't take the money. So she said, I'm going to donate all 7 million of this to charity. Half to the ACLU, half to Children's Hospital, and then what happened was -- and by the way, the 7 million was paid out over time. It's installments. You know, you'll see in the documents, but it's over a couple of years, right?

MS. BREDEHOFT: So his business manager, Ed White, you'll see the letters, he sends the first hundred thousand out of the 7 million to each of them and says this is a pledge towards the 3.5 million that Amber's donating. She'll be paying that in installments. So, everybody knows she's paying it in installments. You're going to hear. differently from them now, but you're going to see that was the admission to begin with.

MS. BREDEHOFT: You're going to hear from Children's Hospital and the ACLU that they assumed this is a pledge paid over a period of time because that's what they do, because of tax deductions and things of that nature. Amber does make, she makes a $250,000 payment to Children's Hospital, and then she also makes a $250,000 payment to Heart of Elysium, which is another charity that she worked for, and it used to feed and used to do a lot of art works with the Children's Hospital. She paid $350,000 to the ACLU. Now, in addition to that, she also was dating Elon Musk by this time. You'll find out that Mr. Depp is obsessed with Elon Musk, but she's dating him, so he gives 500,000 to both of those charities in her honor. Now, she doesn't claim that's part of the 7 million. But what happens is she gets, she makes her payments up through 2018. Mr.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Depp sues her March 1, 2019 in this litigation. She can't afford, right now, to be making those pledges. She's got to defend herself But, she has every intention of continuing to make those payments. She has been a lifelong person who has served charities. She used to volunteer at Children's Hospital three times a week, when she could. She's very much that kind of person and she exchanged it. And both the ACLU and Children's Hospital will tell you they have no reason to believe she won't be good on her pledges. There's nothing that required her to do a certain amount at a certain time, and she will give it to them once she's able to afford it again.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, let me talk about the content for a minute, and then I'm going to -- i have to promise to let you go at some point, don't I?

MS. BREDEHOFT: So Mr. Depp has -- you heard from Ben, you're going to see some really, really terrible text messages from Johnny Depp on how he viewed Amber Heard. He calls her some horrific names. But in the summer of 2016, he vows, he vows he's going to haunt her. He vows she's going to suffer global humiliation. He says he's going to live in her and she will never forget him. And he meant it.

MS. BREDEHOFT: So, in the summer of 2018, you heard Ms. Vasquez say he wanted to clear his name, he can't be called a wife-beater, et cetera. But an article -- an op-ed appeared in the Sun Times in London, they called him a wife-beater. It was written by Dan Wootton, the CEO -- or, yeah, the chief editor of the Sun, at the time, and he was writing because Johnny Depp is being cast in Fantastic Beasts 3. And so, the article is, why is JK Rowling_-

MS. BREDEHOFT: Just the judgment.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Your Honor --

MS. BREDEHOFT: I wasn't talking about the judgment. I'm talking about the lawsuit. That's different.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Because he's already been called that.

MS. BREDEHOFT: No, it's not the judgment. It's the lawsuit. They never moved --

MS. BREDEHOFT: Your Honor, I think they also opened the door, You Honor.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Your Honor, it's very clear in the Motion in Limine that they only asked for the judgment, not the lawsuit.

MS. BREDEHOFT: I apologize, Your Honor, but I respectfully disagree.

MS. BREDEHOFT: So, you will hear testimony-- let me back up a little bit.

MS. BREDEHOFT: So, you have heard from Mr. Depp's team that they are going to claim that Amber Heard abused Johnny Depp. You also are hearing from them that he says that she cut off his finger. When you look at the text messages and you look at the emails, you will see that in every one of those, Mr. Depp said to Dr. Kipper, to David Heard, Amber's father, and to others, I cut off my finger. You will see that. He never, throughout the entire time he was married to Amber, ever claimed that she hit him He never, ever, throughout the time he was married to Amber Heard, claimed that she cut off the finger. Only two years later does he, for the very first time, start claiming she abused him and start claiming that she cut off the finger.

MS. BREDEHOFT: I'm going to ask you to look hard at the evidence in this case because the evidence is going to show that it never, ever came up before.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, let's talk about the counterclaim for a few minutes. There are a few statements here. Now, they said, why aren't you suing Adam Waldman? You heard, from Ben, that Adam Waldman didn't come into Johnny Depp's life until October of 2016. He wasn't there for any of their marriage. He doesn't have any personal knowledge of their marriage. Everything he does is based on Johnny Depp.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Johnny Depp used Adam Waldman as his agent, and you will see a bunch of texts where he's saying, yeah, man, he's going after these people, he's doing all this stuff for me, he's suing my business manager, he's suing the lawyer. He's going after them, he's doing all this. He's also going to the press and making all kinds of statements about Amber Heard. And in those statements are as follows.

MS. BREDEHOFT: And, Heather, if yo"9 could pull up the first.

MS. BREDEHOFT: The first one is "Adam Waldman, Depp's lawyer, said afterwards, Amber Heard and her friends in the media used fake sexual violence allegations as both the sword and shield, depending on their needs. They have selected some O of their sexual violence hoax facts as the sword, inflicting them on the public and Mr. Depp."

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, there isn't any sexual violence hoax. There isn't any hoax at all. But he's out there affirmatively stating that she's got this conspiracy with her friends, and she's making these things up, and it's very, very damaging and harmful to her. The testimony will be that these Depp fans take and run with these things, and you're going to hear from an expert who talks about computer-wise, when you search the hoax, and you see that it just spreads out into the Internet and the social media and generates a lot of negative publicity for Amber.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Statement 2, please.

MS. BREDEHOFT: This was made in April of 2020. Depp's lawyer, Adam Waldman, said "Various discrepancies prove that nothing Heard and her friends say about the events of May 21, 2016 could be considered credible. Simply this was an ambush, a hoax. They set Mr. Depp up by calling the cops, but the first attempt didn't do the nick," he told O Daily Mail.com. "The officers came to the penthouses, fully searched and interviewed, and left after seeing no damage to face or property.

MS. BREDEHOFT: So Amber and her friends spilled a little wine, roughed the place up, and got their story straight under the direction of a lawyer and publicist and then placed a second call to 911."

MS. BREDEHOFT: Now, I've already told you all about the events of May 21, but I'm also -- you're also going to hear from the second set of officers. There's no way that Amber was hying, with her friends, to now get charges pressed against Johnny. They cleaned everything up, they didn't want them in there. The absolute opposite of what he says there.

MS. BREDEHOFT: The third statement, if you may.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Depp's attorney, Adam Waldman, said, "When Amanda de Cadenet," that's a friend of Amber's, "Amber Heard's best friend and Me Too activist decants her support for Ms. Heard and testifies against her, we only have reached the beginning of the end of Ms. Heard's abuse hoax O against Johnny Depp." Amanda de Cadenet never testified against her, but that's not the part that we're claiming. It's the defamation, it's abuse hoax against Johnny Depp.

MS. BREDEHOFT: In other words, in all of these articles, he's saying that she created an abuse hoax and you're going to make a determination of whether that's true or not. But what we're going to show you is that, that not only was tremendously damaging to Amber emotionally, and you're going to hear from an expert on domestic violence and intimate partner violence, IPV, about how those triggers happen. When you have somebody who has gone through all this, and she's trying to heal, trying to get past this, and then, barn, you come in there and you flip this and put this out in the public and everybody around her. There's over a million -- we're going to tell you about a million different searches on the Twitter from these different hits, how that impacts her emotionally.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Every time somebody calls her a liar for what she went through and how hard she tried to protect Johnny Depp so that his children and the public never found out about that Johnny Depp, and how much that has harmed her and how much emotionally that impacted her and retriggered and retriggered.

MS. BREDEHOFT: But we're also going to talk to you about the reputational damages for that. Amber made it through the divorce, then she got cast in Aquaman, I know a few of you saw that. That was a blockbuster. It was the highest grossing movie in DC film history ever, up to this point. It hit over a billion dollars in a very short period of time. It was a mega, mega hit. She was moving forward. Then she gets hit with these defamatory statement and all of the Depp followings and the computer and Twitter and everything else. Nobody wants to touch her.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Well, you're going to hear from an expert who's going to say look at Jason Momoa, look at Defoe, look at other people who started coming up in those tracks. She was in Justice League then Aquaman. Look what they're getting, they're getting commercials, getting all kind of O different film opportunities. These are the things that she would have gotten. Nobody will touch her. She's a pariah. And we're going to ask you, as Ben said, to hold Mr. Depp responsible. Enough is enough.

MS. BREDEHOFT: But we're also going to ask you to hold him responsible and try to fully and fairly compensate Amber for what he has done to her.

MS. BREDEHOFT: Thank you very much.

MR. MURPHY: So, we will have them after lunch.

MR. MURPHY: Yes, Your Honor.

MR. MURPHY: No.