Tesla CEO Elon Musk paid nearly half of his ex-girlfriend Amber Heard’s $1.3 million donation to the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), according to ACLU Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel Terence Dougherty, who testified Thursday at the Depp-Heard defemination trial.
Heard had promised to donate $3.5 million — from her January 2017 divorce settlement with Johnny Depp — to the ACLU but only ended up paying $1.3 million to the left-wing organization, with Musk’s money making up a large chunk of it, Dougherty testified on Thursday.
Of that $1.3 million, Heard contributed $350,000 directly, Depp contributed $100,000 in Heard’s name, and $350,000 — anonymously donated in Heard’s name — came from a “donor-advised fund” at Fidelity.
In July 2017, another $500,000 came from an account at The Vanguard Group, which Dougherty said he believed was a fund set up by Musk.
Dougherty said Musk had contacted ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero about the donation, and that based on emails between Musk and Romero, the ACLU understood that Heard’s $3.5 million donation would be made in separate installments over the course of ten years.
“Amber, I described your plan to donate $3.5 million to the ACLU over the next ten years, as you very much believe in what they are doing,” read an email from Musk to Romero in 2016.
But after making the four initial payments that added up to $1.3 million, Heard has effectively ceased making any additional payments, failing to follow through on her promise of a $3.5 million donation, as of January 2019 and on, Dougherty noted.
One of Depp’s lawyers asked Dougherty what “efforts has the ACLU made to get Amber Heard to pay” the rest of her donation.
“We reached out to Miss Heard starting in 2019 for the next installment of her giving, and we learned that she was having financial difficulties,” Dougherty testified.
Depp is suing Heard, his ex-wife, citing a 2018 piece she wrote for the Washington Post, in which she referred to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”
The Pirates of the Caribbean star, who has denied Heard’s allegations of abuse, says the Washington Post piece has harmed his movie career, and is seeking $50 million in defamation. Heard is countersuing for $100 million.
The ACLU, which partially funded by billionaire George Soros, is known for being a hive for the left-wing agenda.
Last year, the ACLU sued to have Title 42 — an order that gives federal immigration officials authority to quickly detain and return border crossers to their native countries — thrown out, while asking Biden administration officials to end the policy.
In September, the ACLU asserted that mandates for the Chinese coronavirus vaccines “actually further civil liberties,” and deemed vaccines a “justifiable intrusion on autonomy and bodily integrity.”
In 2020, the ACLU sued to have hundreds of inmates freed from jail in Orange County, California, in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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