Amber Heard Sister Bombshell Kept From Jury?! See The Shocking Declaration Details!

The latest witness in Johnny Depp‘s defamation trial against ex Amber Heard dropped some serious bombshells — but the jury apparently won’t ever see them.

On Tuesday afternoon, Jennifer Howell‘s pre-taped deposition was played for the court to hear. Or at least, some of it was? It’s unclear, but it seemed to be cut short only 15 minutes was played, and it ended rather abruptly. Surely they had more than an Adult Swim episode’s worth of questions to ask, right?

The answer may be that some of the deposition was edited out before being played for the jury because it was inadmissible — for instance because it was ruled hearsay. Whatever arguments the legal teams presented to the judge we were not privy to — so we’re very much in the jury’s position there. However, unlike them we may have an idea about what she was saying! A declaration has come out — that also won’t be shown to the jury — in which Howell basically says Amber’s sister Whitney Henriquez was LYING!

Whitney is the only witness to corroborate Amber’s story, to say she actually witnessed Johnny hitting her. And this woman says she was FULL OF IT!

“I have learned that Whitney testified in court July 23 in London about a violent incident in March 2015 on the stairs at Johnny Depp’s penthouse. She testified that Johnny supposedly hit Amber and Whitney on the stairs at Johnny’s downtown penthouse. then Whitney said she had to go to live with her employer where she had to sleep on their floor. I am that employer. This is not what I was told to be true.”

Whoa.

We’re definitely getting that whole hearsay possibility now, as this was what she’s testifying she was told. But we’re still a little surprised that someone rebutting another witness as having told them something else at the time isn’t allowed.

But you know what? This ain’t a courtroom. And we’re going to see what else this woman had to say!

Howell runs a non-profit called The Art of Elysium where Whitney worked at the time. She wasn’t present for the incident at the apartment, but she recalls things being told to her quite differently! First, she said, Whitney stayed in her guest room, not on the floor. Second? “She was a mess” as she relayed this story:

“Whitney told me she tried to stop her sister Amber from hitting and attacking Johnny on the stairs. Whitney said when she tried to intervene to stop Amber from going after Johnny, Amber nearly pushed Whitney down the stairs.”

Damn! That’s such a twist on what Amber testified — she even invoked Kate Moss! Howell continued:

“[Whitney] told me she was worried Amber ‘was going to kill Johnny.’ She told me she had endured that kind of abuse her entire life, first from her father, and then from Amber, who she said was extremely violent.”

She went on to say that Whitney had lived with her temporarily “because she was terrified of her sister.” This is just… Wow. And that isn’t all. She also declared:

“While Whitney was living with me, she told me Johnny kept checking in to see how she was doing and that he called her ‘sis’ and she called him ‘brother.’ Whitney said to me on multiple occasions that she did not know why he was staying in the relationship nor why he was putting up with Amber’s abuse.”

Talk about a 180! But it went deeper than that!

“Whitney shared with me the damage endured by both her and Amber as children and the injuries she had suffered from Amber both psychologically and physically. Whitney was devastated during this time, and my heart broke for her.”

She even claimed that Whitney had told her about recent abuse!

“When Whitney came back from New York (I believe it was for the Tribeca Film Festival, The Adderall Diaries premiere or both) she shared with me and everyone in the office that Amber freaked out, attacked Whitney and threw a wine glass full of red wine at her in the elevator.”

Not only that, Whitney allegedly contradicted her sister’s story about Australia, too!

“While Amber and Johnny were in Australia, Whitney was in the office sitting in the black and white chairs near the kitchen and loudly proclaimed, ‘Oh my God, she has done it now. She has cut off his f***ing finger.'”

According to this woman — and we cannot for the life of us think of what reason she’d have to lie — Whitney at the time said it was Amber who cut off Johnny’s finger with a bottle and not an injury he suffered while abusing her for days on end.

Howell also said she asked Amber’s publicist why her own non-profit, the one her sister worked at, wasn’t getting any of that divorce money. Instead the future Aquaman star had promised it to the ACLU and Children’s Hospital LA. She said she was told it was because those “were more prominent charities with a more significant press reach and got international press” — implying the entire thing was about the press, not the charity. That would make sense given that Amber never actually donated all that money after getting the headlines about doing so.

Yeesh.

For what it’s worth, we do know how Whitney feels about her former boss’s recollections. When the declaration was first made, after the UK trial, she told The Mirror: