Elon Musk Fund Believed To Have Donated $500,000 To Organisation In Amber Heard’s Name

A fund set up by Tesla co-founder Elon Musk is thought to have been responsible for a $500,000 charity donation made in Amber Heard's name, the court heard.

Terence Dougherty, chief operating officer of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), spoke about the donation during a pre-recorded deposition played today (28 April) during Johnny Depp and Heard's ongoing defamation trial.

Heard had pledged following her divorce from Depp that she would donate a total of $3.5 million (£2.68m) of her settlement money to the ACLU, $500,000 of which Dougherty said came from a donor-advised fund at Vanguard.

During the deposition, the COO explained the charity believed the $500,000 (£401,000) payment came from a fund set up by Musk, who Heard met on the set of the 2013 film Machete Kills.

Dougherty noted that, at the time of his deposition in December 2021, the ACLU had only received $1.3m of the pledged $3.5m from Heard. As well as the $500,000 from the donor-advised fund, the donations consisted of $350,000 (£280,000) from Heard herself, $100,000 (£80,000) paid by Depp and $350,000 from another donor-advised fund.

Following Heard's pledge, Musk emailed Anthony Romero, the executive director of the ACLU, in 2016 indicating the Aquaman star would donate the total $3.5m over a 10-year period, Dougherty testified.

Musk allegedly wrote: "Amber, I described your plan to donate $3.5 billion to the ACLU over the next 10 years as you very much believe what you were doing."

Documents shown during the trial include a thank you note to Heard for her pledge, and a pledge form and schedule regarding her donation. Dougherty said Heard never signed the pledge form, and in 2019 the organisation did not receive its next instalment of the donation as expected.

He explained: "We reached out to Heard starting in 2019 for the next instalment of her giving and we learned that she was having financial difficulties."

The nature of the relationship between Musk and Heard was discussed earlier during the trial in a deposition given by Christian Carino, an agent at Creative Artists Agency who had represented Depp and Heard.

Some texts exchanged between Carino and Heard were shared with the court, including a message from 2017 in which Heard complained about her breakup with Musk, to which Carino responded: "Why would you be sad if you were not in love with him to begin with. You told me a thousand times you were just filling space.”

Carino said during his deposition Heard had 'spent time' with Musk while attempting to reconcile her relationship with Depp in 2016.

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Topics: Amber Heard, Elon Musk, Johnny Depp, Celebrity

Emily Brown

Emily Brown is UNILAD Editorial Lead at LADbible Group. She first began delivering news when she was just 11 years old - with a paper route - before graduating with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University. Emily joined UNILAD in 2018 to cover breaking news, trending stories and longer form features. She went on to become Community Desk Lead, commissioning and writing human interest stories from across the globe, before moving to the role of Editorial Lead. Emily now works alongside the UNILAD Editor to ensure the page delivers accurate, interesting and high quality content.