Amber Heard was “repeatedly” warned she and her ex-husband Johnny Depp couldn’t bring their dogs, Pistol and Boo, to Australia due to strict quarantine laws, London’s High Court has heard.
The tidbit of info came out as part of the ongoing court case between Depp and the Sun newspaper in the UK.
Depp’s former estate manager, Kevin Murphy, told the court Heard pressured him to help smuggle the dogs or else he’d lose his job.
“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.
That fateful incident saw Heard charged in 2015 with two counts of illegally importing the Yorkshire Terriers.
Then, Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce decided to get his big head involved by threatening to put the dogs down if they didn’t leave the country in 50 hours.
The whole saga ended in 2016 with Heard and Depp releasing the world’s most awkward and stilted apology video, in which they called Australia “a wonderful island”.
According to Murphy, Heard told him something along the lines of: “I want your help on this. I wouldn’t want you to have a problem with your job.”
In court, Murphy defended his decision not to push back or tell Depp about the weird request.
“Amber wielded a lot of power and would have made my life miserable,” he said.
“As in several circumstances which I observed, it was as if she felt that she was above the law.”
Murphy’s account was backed up Kate James in court, who was Heard’s personal assistant between 2012 and 2015.
The trial, which is for libel and not dog trafficking, is still ongoing.
