12h 30min, oct 30, 2019 y - NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Amber Heard renews demand for biz records allegedly showing Johnny Depp ‘violently abused’ her, paid ‘hush money’

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Amber Heard renews demand for biz records allegedly showing Johnny Depp ‘violently abused’ her, paid ‘hush money’

By NANCY DILLON

Amber Heard is asking a judge to enforce her subpoena seeking records that allegedly show Johnny Depp “violently abused” her and pressured employees to keep quiet.

In a new court petition filed Tuesday night, the “Aquaman” actress claims Depp’s ex-management firm is sitting on a treasure trove of evidence and refusing to fork it over as she defends against the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star’s $50 million defamation lawsuit filed in Virginia.

Heard says the firm, known as The Management Group (TMG), handled Depp’s business dealings from 1999 until a falling out in 2016 that led to a bitter lawsuit.

She said TMG revealed during its now-settled legal battle with Depp that it was aware the actor “violently abused Ms. Heard” and pushed his employees to cover up his alleged misconduct.

“For example, when text messages were published showing that Mr. Depp’s longtime assistant apologized to Ms. Heard for Mr. Depp’s ‘disgusting’ behavior, Mr. Depp pressured the assistant to falsely and publicly accuse Ms. Heard of ‘manufacturing’ those messages,” her filing in Los Angeles County Superior Court states.

“According to TMG, Mr. Depp ‘knew full well that the text messages were genuine but pressured and berated his assistant to falsely challenge the texts publicly,’” Heard’s paperwork states.

She further claims a TMG executive was informed by Depp’s staff that he “violently kicked Heard during an incident that took place in or around 2014.”

“TMG was aware that Mr. Depp abused Ms. Heard and pressured his employees to make false public statements denying that abuse. TMG also paid millions of dollars to various members of Mr. Depp’s staff, many of whom are witnesses in Mr. Depp’s lawsuit against Ms. Heard,” Heard’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said in a statement to the Daily News.

“Assuming the court in Virginia permits this case to proceed, trial is scheduled for early February. As a result, TMG needs to produce these documents now,” she said.

Heard’s camp is urging the judge to reject TMG’s claims that protective orders governing its now-dismissed Depp dispute. The actress and her lawyers have even offered to self-collect and copy the requested files so TMG doesn’t have to shoulder the alleged $5,575 cost.

“TMG’s baseless and boilerplate objections must be rejected,” her petition states.
Lawyers for TMG had “no comment” when reached by The News on Wednesday.
Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman called the filing a “smear."

In a lengthy statement, Waldman tried to discredit Heard by highlighting the fact she’s working with Kaplan, a co-founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund who previously defended Harvey Weinstein in an unrelated matter before his sexual misconduct scandal exploded.

Kaplan has since said she had no knowledge of Weinstein’s serial sexual misconduct when she worked with him years ago.

Still, Waldman knocked Kaplan along with others representing Heard and slammed Heard’s petition as untruthful.

“Their latest Weinsteinian smear is to insinuate that Johnny Depp is paying all the dozens of eyewitnesses, including all the absolute strangers so disgusted by injustice that they have voluntarily come forward to tell the truth they witnessed,” Waldman said.

He then claimed Heard is trying to classify Depp as what she herself “is accused of” being, “a violent domestic abuser.”

Waldman did not immediately respond to a request for clarification of his statement.
In 2009, Heard was arrested on suspicion of domestic battery after fighting with her ex-girlfriend Tasya van Ree in an airport. Charges were never filed.

“Amber was wrongfully accused for an incident that was misinterpreted and over-sensationalized by two individuals in a power position,” van Ree said in a statement previously obtained by The News.

Depp sued Heard for defamation earlier this year after she published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post last December calling for “changes to laws and rules and social norms” surrounding the issue of domestic violence.
The star claimed the piece, which did not mention him by name, “revived” Heard’s claims of domestic abuse and hurt his reputation and career.

During the couple’s contentious 2016 divorce battle, Heard claimed Depp hurled a cell phone at her face, pulled her hair and smashed bottles of wine.

She appeared in court with a bruised face and won an emergency domestic violence stay-away order.

Heard was on the verge of testifying about the alleged abuse at a follow-up court hearing when the couple reached a private settlement that August.

“Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love,” the former couple said in a joint statement announcing the deal. “Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain.”

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