In 2015, actress Amber Heard was charged with bringing then-husband Johnny Depp’s two Yorkshire terriers into Australia illegally. The case was closed back then, but now, Heard is being investigated for allegedly committing perjury during the dog smuggling incident.
The allegations came out during Depp’s libel lawsuit last year against a British tabloid. During that case, Depp’s former estate manager testified that Heard asked him to lie under oath for her after she was charged with illegally importing the dogs into Australia. As E!News reported, Heard didn’t obtain a permit for the dogs prior to bringing them into the country on a private jet and without having them quarantine for two weeks.
“After Australian’s agriculture minister threatened to have the dogs euthanized unless they ‘buggered off back to the United States,’ Depp and Heard had the dogs flown back, again on a private jet,” E!News reported. “Facing the prospect for a maximum 10-year prison sentence, the actress pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of falsifying a travel document to sneak the dogs into the Australia. Her lawyer told the court the actress was jetlagged, worried about a hand injury that Depp suffered during filming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and believed her assistants had sorted out the paperwork for the dogs.”
In April 2016, Heard agreed to a “one-month $1,000 good behavior bond,” according to Yahoo. She filed for divorce from Depp one month later.
Now she is being investigated for potential perjury during that case. When Depp sued Heard and the British tabloid for defamation for claiming he was a domestic abuser, Depp’s former estate manager Kevin Murphy testified that Heard asked him to claim she didn’t know she couldn’t bring the dogs into the country, according to The Associated Press.
“She wanted me to say essentially that it was my fault in one way or another that the paperwork wasn’t completed, so that I could take the blame for her,” Murphy said.
Murphy also claimed that Heard told him: “I want your help on this. I wouldn’t want you to have a problem with your job.”
On cross-examination, Murphy was asked why he didn’t have Depp come to his defense at the time. Murphy said, “Because Amber wielded a lot of power and would have made my life miserable.”
Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment are reportedly reopening the investigation into Heard and even asking the FBI for help to find witnesses, though the FBI has not confirmed this.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Depp lost his libel lawsuit against the British tabloid, but still has a case pending in Virginia. In the United Kingdom, a judge determined that Depp had physically abused Heard on 12 out of her 14 accusations. As The Daily Wire reported, Depp lost that case in large part due to the difficulties in proving libel cases. Depp had to prove that he didn’t abuse Heard — essentially he had to prove a negative. And while a judge in the U.K. acknowledged that Depp was able to cast doubt on at least two of Heard’s allegations, he failed to disprove her other 12 allegations.
Depp’s attorneys called the ruling “perverse” and “bewildering,” pointing out the mountain of evidence the judge appeared to have ignored in arriving at his decision.
“Most troubling is the Judge’s reliance on the testimony of Amber Heard, and corresponding disregard of the mountain of counter-evidence from police officers, medical practitioners, her own former assistant, other unchallenged witnesses and an array of documentary evidence which completely undermined the allegations, point by point. All of this was overlooked,” said Depp’s attorney Jenny Afia. “The judgment is so flawed that it would be ridiculous for Mr. Depp not to appeal this decision.”
In response to the reopened investigation against Heard, her attorney criticized the Australian government.
“The Court of Depp’s choice – the London High Court of Justice – found that Depp committed at least 12 acts of domestic violence against Amber Heard, causing her at times to fear for her life,” Heard’s attorney said in a statement to E! News. “It is truly inconceivable, and we are confident it is not true, that either the Australian Government, or the FBI, would embrace a policy of further pursuing and victimizing a person who has already been adjudicated to be the victim of domestic violence. This is especially true where the exact same claims being reported in the press now were made, unsuccessfully, in the UK High Court.”