Billionaire Elon Musk had to chip in for his ex-girlfriend Amber Heard and pay nearly half of her donation to the ACLU. Still, Heard has never paid the full amount of money she pledged to donate.
Depp's ex-wife donated only $1.3 million to the ACLU instead of the promised $3.5 million, and $500,000 from that sum was paid by her former boyfriend Musk on her behalf.
The delicate detail was revealed during the Thursday testimony by the ACLU Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel Terence Dougherty, who said that the promised donation has not been paid in full yet.
Of the $1.3 million received by the ACLU, Heard directly paid $350,000; Depp parted with $100,000, with another $350,000 coming from the investment company Fidelity.
Dougherty said that another $500,000 came from the investment firm Vanguard, which he believed "was a fund set up by Elon Musk". He also said that the messages from Musk regarding the money suggested that Heard's promised donation would be paid over the course of 10 years.
"We reached out to Miss Heard starting in 2019 for the next instalment of her giving and we learned she was having financial difficulties," Dougherty said when asked about the ACLU efforts to get Heard to pay.
After divorcing Depp in 2016, Heard promised to give her $7 million settlement to charity, designating $3.5 million for the ACLU, and another half for the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles.
Currently, Heard and Depp are locked in a dramatic legal battle over the multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit. Depp claims that Heard's 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post about domestic abuse effectively ruined his career, even though the actress did not name him directly in the article. She countersued him, demanding $100 million - twice as much as Depp requested when filing his lawsuit.
The trial is expected to continue for six weeks.