Johnny Depp donates proceeds from NFT sales to charity related to Amber Heard
Johnny Depp has donated the proceeds from an NFT sale to four charities, including the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, which has ties to Amber Heard.
On Wednesday (July 6), Depp’s Never Fear Truth NFT (non-fungible token) platform announced that it had raised “almost $ 800,000 (£ 666,530) in total donations” which was shared between four organizations.
The tweet went on to name the recipients: “Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation (via CAF America), Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity (via CAF America), The Footprint Coalition, [and] the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital. “
Of the four charitable organizations, the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital has been associated with Depp’s ex-wife Heard.
During the alienated couple’s recent defamation lawsuit, it was revealed that Heard had not donated her $ 7 million (£ 5.8 million) divorce payment from Depp, as she had promised to do in 2016.
One of the two charities Heard said she would split the settlement between was the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital. The other was the American Civil Liberties Union.
Following the announcement of Depp’s NFT sale, fans praised The Pirates of the Caribbean actor for his “infinite goodness”.
Referring to the trial, one person wrote: “And this, ladies and gentlemen, is philanthropy. And the difference between an unfulfilled promise and a direct donation. PS promises usually have a schedule for fulfillment. And a signed mortgage vehicle. I’m sure these organizations are very grateful. “
Heard was subjected to intense cross-examination by Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez during the trial when she claimed that she had not been able to fulfill these promises due to legal costs from the ex-husband who sued her.
The Aquaman Star also said she used the word “pledged” and “donated” interchangeably, and then separately compared giving donations to buying a house through mortgage payments over time.
“I promised everything to charity. When you say you buy a house, you do not pay for the whole house at once. You pay it over time,” she said at the time.
An anonymous jury member in the defamation case against Depp and Heard previously said that the revelation that she did not donate the divorce settlement to charity, as she had claimed, was “a failure” in the jury’s eyes.
Depp sued his ex-wife for defamation over an op-ed for 2018 Washington Post where she described herself as a victim of domestic abuse and talked about feeling “the full force of our culture’s anger at women who speak out.”
Heard sued Depp for $ 100 million (£ 83 million) for “orchestrating a smear campaign” against her.
A jury of seven handed down its verdict and ruled that Heard had defamed Depp on all three counts. Depp was awarded $ 10 million in compensatory damages and $ 5 million in criminal damages, which was later reduced to the state’s legal limit of $ 350.00.
Heard won one of her three counterclaims, and the jury found that Depp – via his lawyer Adam Waldman – defamed her by branding her allegations of an incident in 2016 as “an ambush, a hoax”.
“Do you believe the jurors sitting there, that you were caught in a lie?” asked Savannah Guthrie during Heard’s interview with the NBC host on American television last month, referring to her testimony about the donations.
In response, Heard said the trial was used to try to portray her as “a liar”, arguing that she should not have promised the entire settlement in the first place for people to believe her allegations of abuse against Depp.
Meanwhile, Depp has apparently criticized Heard on a new album he releases with musician Jaeff Beck.