Watching the media meltdown after this week of the Depp-Herd trial is a treat.

Sure, they're lying : it's the media.

While I haven't been clinging to every moment  - I've skipped over swathes, listened to a lot of it at 1.5x speed, and not watched much of what I listened to - there is plenty I've directly noted, and fully believe that Amber is a lying BPD bitch who ruined Johnny's life.  And no, I'm not particularly a Depp fan, but this trial addresses two main issues:

  • Public awareness that women can be abusive and toxic
  • The utter nightmare that a default position of "believe all women" allows, by giving free rein to psychopaths and the BPD to lie through their teeth and destroy lives.

These factors loom large enough that outlets like the NYT are rallying behind the call to believe Amber. For commentary, Rekeita of course has been covering this, and for a good summary of what a total implosion Amber's case is going through as of this week - this summary by Runkle, with other lawyers who've also been in the courtroom this week, is gold.

Up through the previous week it was JD's case to make. He himself testified as to his own abuse, at Amber's hands, and his mother's. He did so properly, bringing in the needed experts to present evidence for his case. The police that were repeatedly called by Amber, and friend after friend, long term employee after employee, all testified that despite any yelling or anger, he never hit Amber. The police specifically testified they never saw injuries, or signs of violence. A PTSD expert testified that Amber was lying about PTSD, and actually had BPD. By the end of his case, the general public tone was in his favor.

First of all - if anyone has ever dealt with a cluster-B personality, Amber showed all the hallmarks. Not only by the nature of the stories Johnny told, which fit the mold without severe and unbelievable exaggeration, but by her own behavior on the stand.

From here, I'm going to stick to what supports JD's case, from the testimony elicited in Amber's case in chief.

First witness was a highly certified DV specialist who, though the point was clumsily made by Johnny's team, somehow never has testified in a case where a woman was the abuser. Even if a man was abused, she was testifying to abuse by men. Unlike the other experts, this expert wasn't able to testify without effectively directly reading her reports, and got very snappy about being told to stop that. Overall likely a meh or in AH's favor, but the bias was fairly apparent if you were willing to look - and she was used to testify to a lot of what Amber alleged as facts, rather than expert opinion.

Amber got on the stand. Her own testimony of what has supposedly happened is marked by repeated events so horrific that her near total lack of an asserted medical record or treatment, permanent scarring all over her back and arms, permanent damage to her feet, or anyone noticing significant and severe swelling is nothing short of a miracle.

Assuming it was true.

That brings us to this week, the conclusion of the above sensational testimony and the cross examination, followed by more witnesses for AH. The middle of her cross by JD's lawyers was effective, but markedly less effective than the beginning and end. The beginning and end though...

A key reason for winning the court case in the UK was apparently her testimony that she wasn't in it for the money, that she had, in her own words in both the court case, and in repeated media appearances, bluntly stated that she had donated all of her divorce proceeds to charity.

It turns out that, outside of money given by JD and Elon Musk in her name, she had actually pledged the 7 million to charity, and actually signed over none of it. And the idiot insisted on getting in a fight over that, that as far as she was concerned, donating and pledging were the same thing, and repeatedly attempted to weasel out of answering no to the issue of "did you actually turn the money over."

Oh, and she was mercurially angry at the idea that she was a victim, or that JD helped get her a role in Aquaman.

At the end, she was called out for not having a medical record of any kind to back up assertions of multiple broken noses, and so on. Here, she tried to throw a number of people under the bus including her lawyers. She asserted the doctors were lying in tehir records because they were paid by Depp. She also attested that she had handed over her phone - as if her records were on there - as if it answered the question.

Not underlined in cross or brought up was that the phone was belatedly handed over and apparently had to be cracked, and that none of the images handed over "proving" Amber's abuse and damage and destruction caused by JD included time or date stamps and other metadata, making it nearly impossible to determine if the images of chaos and destroyed items, the cocaine on the table, and other pictures were actually taken when claimed.

The utter disaster was when AH's lawyer tried to rehab her on cross, and literally couldn't get a question answered because she kept adding leading questions, and kept trying to get medical testimony in without records or the testimony of the doctors who would have generated them.

Wednesday was objectively the worst day for JD, with a credible-seeming boyfriend of one of Amber's fellow leeches supporting a fair bit of Amber's testimony, but even he hadn't actually seen JD cause much if any of the destruction, or hit anyone. AH's sister showed up and largely corroborated AH, but her account of the critical staircase and other incidents differed in major and significant details. Nevertheless, a slight win for Amber, and utterly to be expected.

This was also the first case, IIRC, that I recall one of Amber's witnesses noting a time for when Depp started markedly getting worse, that happened to coincide with when he met Amber.

This brings us to Thursday.

What a total clown show.

Not in any particular order.

  • A friend of Johnny's, and not the only one, who noted that JD was merely high/drunk or not, and never changed moods based on his state of drunkenness. I recall his timing for when JD went downhill also just happened to be when JD met Amber.
  • JD's fired manager who had been sued for not filing taxes and of course testified he did nothing wrong or mismanaged/stole JD's money, and that JD was awful.
  • An ex fling who's bombshell was that, oh wait, it was a sexual relationship , not a romantic one, he had tossed a bottle toward her and other people vice throwing it at her, and had been upset about something else at that time, not her. Apparently JD likes the crazy ones. Given his testimony re: his mother, that fits.
  • AH's agent who testified that Aquaman was the biggest movie ever, AH was critical in it, but somehow they couldn't renegotiate AH's contract. And AH never lost any contracts or roles regarding damages for AH's defamation countersuit. Just unspecified movie by unspecified director of unknown title, with no documentation.
  • One of Depp's lawyers involved in the UK case, who spent most of the deposition accepting instructions that he couldn't say anything due to attorney client privilege. Then testified he'd taken a binder of material to the LAPD to file charges of perjury against Amber. They tried to impeach him by pointing out he knew the LAPD had dropped the case, he countered that he'd been informed it was moved to the county sheriff and hadn't heard anything since, either way. Yes, Amber's lawyers brought up a guy who spent ten plus minutes repeating over and over that he thought Amber was a liar and had perjured herself, enough so he brought documentation to the police. They also brought up him releasing info to various independent internet reporters, specifically naming That Umbrella Guy, whom the lawyer acknowledged, and retroactively further bolstered TUG's credibility for his years reporting on AH and JD.
  • A no-shit computer expert who poorly testified to evidence that AH was the victim of an online smear campaign. Not underlined - the table showed a ramp-up of anti-Depp hashtags at the time of the Wapo article he's suing over. The funniest part was that as a result of that table, and the line graph, JD's lawyers got to repeat "amberturd" and "wejustdontlikeyouamberheard" and "justiceforjohnnydepp" over and over again. Leaving aside the question of why justice for Johnny was inherently bad for Amber, JD's lawyers also tossed the grenade that #justicceforjohnnydepp so completely dwarfed the rest of the hashtags negative to Amber, that he couldn't include it in the line chart because the rest would not have been discernable.
  • A self-styled "superlawyer" who testified that Amber had come to him to rewrite her WaPo article so that it would not be defamatory, she'd followed his advice, ergo it could not be. Please to ignore that she had to get what she'd written down analyzed and edited down to even try to appear non-defamatory.
  • JD's psychiatrist, who didn't give much up, but also coincidentally pointed to the time frame of Johnny meeting Amber as when there was a marked downhill change in his life and health.

In short, this last day, in her attempt to get the counterclaims founded, she did more to undermine her own case that she was honest, and that Johnny became violent when drunk, much less violent towards her. If the lawtube guys I mentioned above, who observed the jury, are to be believed, the jury is not buying it.

As the week closes, with her case not yet made, Amber has less than 9 hours of time available for testimony and cross, Depp's side has 18. They can still bring in most of their previous witnesses, most especially the PTSD expert, with little if any time to have them get torn apart. It's unsure if they can get Kate Moss, who has supported Depp, or others in as well, depending on what doors have been opened by Amber's own testimony and witnesses.

It's notable how many long-term employees and friends Depp has who were willing to come in, and how few ex-friends against him, while Amber has a lot of ex-friends that are only testifying via deposition instead of showing up.