Conservative politicians and talking heads can barely contain their excitement about the verdict finding Amber Heard defamed Johnny Depp.
More importantly, they seemingly view the verdict in the high-profile case as the end of the #MeToo movement and its push to hold people who’ve committed abuse and misconduct accountable.
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A Virginia jury awarded Depp $15 million on Wednesday following six weeks of testimony, finding that Heard acted “with actual malice” when the Washington Post published an op-ed in 2018, ghostwritten by the ACLU and published under Heard’s name, identifying her as a victim of “sexual violence” and domestic abuse. The jury of seven separately awarded Heard $2 million, finding that Depp defamed her when his lawyer called her allegations a “hoax.”
Depp once joked about killing former President Donald Trump, in remarks that were later played by Trump’s lawyers during his second impeachment trial. But even before the verdict came down, figures on the right started weaponizing the case for their own political ends.
The Daily Wire, the conservative website founded by commentator Ben Shapiro, spent tens of thousands of dollars promoting mostly anti-Heard and pro-Depp articles on Facebook and Instagram, to the tune of 4 million impressions, as VICE News previously reported.
That trend continued Wednesday. Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former president who’s been publicly accused of (and has denied engaging in) sexual misconduct by at least 25 women going back to the 1970s, tweeted following the verdict that Depp v. Heard is “perhaps a case that could end the effective rabid femminist [sic] notion that all men are guilty before being proven innocent that we’ve seen as of late.”
Immediately after the verdict, the Twitter account for GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted a GIF of Depp as Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Rep. Jim Jordan is the ranking Republican on the committee. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a committee member who’s been under investigation by the Justice Department for more than a year over potential sex trafficking, retweeted the GIF.
Meghan McCain, the former co-host of The View who is famously John McCain’s daughter, tweeted and later deleted a tweet that said: “#MeToo is dead. Helluva job ACLU.”
Other right-wing pundits like Ann Coulter and former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch weighed in as well. Loesch said that Heard “destroyed ‘believe all women,’” while Coulter, similar to McCain, declared: “And thus ends the #MeToo movement.”
Heard’s attorney Elaine Charlson Bredehoft said during an appearance on Good Morning America that Heard “absolutely” will appeal the verdict, saying the social media circus around the trial had a massive impact on the jury, which was not sequestered. “How can you not [see it]?” Bredehoft said. “It was horrible. It really, really, was lopsided… it was like the Roman Colloseum, how they viewed this whole case.”
“She has some excellent grounds for it,” Bredehoft said of an appeal.
