Johnny Depp wins bid to get vital phone evidence against Amber Heard

The Virginia court on Wednesday granted Johnny Depp access to Amber Heard's phone records which are vital proof in his $50 million libel case against his ex-wife.

The embattled actor wants to prove that his "Rum Diary" co-star faked injuries she allegedly sustained during their marriage. She had sued him for domestic abuse when she filed for divorce in 2016. He has since vehemently denied her accusations and gave her a $7 million divorce settlement with an agreement that neither of them should talk about the alleged abuse again in public.

However, Heard broke that agreement with her December 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post, wherein she described herself as a domestic abuse survivor. She did not name drop the actor but her piece was telling enough.

Since then the "Pirates of the Caribbean" star has lobbied to clear his name, even as far as going against British publication The Sun in London's High Court last year against its "wife-beater" article. He may have lost the case but he is determined to prove his innocence during next year's court trial in Virginia against his ex-wife.

Now, Depp's legal team wants to prove that Heard doctored the photos that purportedly show her with two black eyes, which she said she suffered at the hands of the actor during an attack in Los Angeles in 2015. She alleged that she also had a broken nose and a broken lip.

"Ms. Heard's counsel has repeatedly used these phony photographs at deposition," Depp's lawyer Benjamin Chew alleged to the Circuit Court of Fairfax County, Va., in a court filing.

According to Page Six, the court has granted Depp and his legal team access to her phone records so their expert, Brian Neumeister, can look at the metadata and verify if there were any doctored photos. The previous images they received reportedly did not contain metadata. But Neumeister was able to determine that they had gone through a "photo editing application called Photo 3 that can easily manipulate images such as showing bruises where none actually existed."

In his court filing, Chew also alleged that authorities from the Los Angeles Police Department did not find any injury on Heard and "no disruption to the penthouses" when they responded to a call about the attack. The LAPD also "disavowed the photographs" since "they did not depict what they saw." Depp's lawyer told the court that "Heard and her friends then fabricated photos that she used to obtain an ex parte TRO [temporary restraining order] and a $7 million divorce settlement which Ms. Heard falsely testified in London she gave to the ACLU and, more scandalously, to the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles; sick children with cancer."