Damning revelations from the Amber Heard v Johnny Depp defamation case continue to appear, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) testifying that staffers from the organisation ghost-wrote Heard's infamous op-ed in the Washington Post, which is at the centre of the defamation case.
On day 11 of the trial, the ACLU claimed the article was written internally, with the timing of the pitch carefully planned around the release of Aquaman (Heard's upcoming film at the time).
Email correspondence has shown that Robin Shulman, a communications strategist within the ACLU, wrote the first draft of the op-ed in November 2018. Following that, Heard's legal team is said to have made changes to avoid any obvious incrimination of Depp.
Terence Dougherty, general counsel and COO of the ACLU, also testified about the back-and-forth correspondence which took place while settling on a final draft. He claims that Heard pushed to have more details of her marriage to Depp included and was looking to have a deleted passage restored.
"The language that wound up in the final op-ed piece was very different from the original language” Dougherty said.