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Amber Heard’s witness and social media forensic expert Ron Schnell took the stand at the Fairfax County Court on May 19 to testify on the former’s ongoing defamation trial with ex-husband, Johnny Depp.
Schnell claimed that he analyzed social media posts about Depp and Heard between 2018 and 2021 and found millions of negative tweets directed towards the Aquaman star. He also said that the #JusticeForJohnnyDepp hashtag turned out to be the biggest trending topic amid the ongoing legal battle.
The social media expert further claimed that Johnny Depp’s former lawyer Adam Waldman allegedly orchestrated negative tweets against Amber Heard and spearheaded a smear campaign against the actress.
He said that the negative tweets against Heard showed a major spike following Waldman’s comments against the star. Amber Heard’s legal team submitted the evidence as part of her $100 million countersuit against Johnny Depp.
Everything to know about Ron Schnell
Ron Schnell is a social media forensic expert who serves as the director of the Berkeley Research Group. He is also an adjunct professor and advisor at Nova Southeastern University.
The expert describes himself as a “kernel guru, serial entrepreneur, and genetic genealogist,” per his LinkedIn bio. He previously served as the general manager and chief executive of The Technical Committee and has also worked for IBM Corporation, AT&T Bell Laboratories and Sun Microsystems, among others.
Schnell has also been the vice president of Equifax and an advisor at Syracuse University in the past. According to his official bio, the expert has knowledge of over forty computer languages and has also served as an expert witness on high-profile cases in the areas of software licensing, intellectual property, cyber security, and other highly technical matters.
A look into Ron Schnell’s testimony at the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard defamation trial
On Thursday, Ron Schnell testified at the ongoing Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard defamation trial and accused Depp’s former attorney Adam Waldman of spearheading negative tweets against Heard.
Schnell noted that he found more than a million negative tweets for Heard and conducted a forensic analysis on the posts with two sets of nearly one thousand hashtags directed towards the actress.
He mentioned that the most popular hashtag listed on the charts was #JusticeforJohnnyDepp and said he found the more demeaning tags for Heard, including #WeJustDontLikeYouAmber, #AmberHeardIsAnAbuser, and #AmberTurd.
The social media expert then claimed that he saw a spike in such hashtags following statements made by Depp’s former attorney Adam Waldman. Schnell said one such spike was noted in February 2020 after Waldman sent an audio exchange between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp to The Daily Mail.
The infamous audio went viral immediately upon release and has continued to make rounds on the internet to this day. The audio clip revealed Heard telling Depp that the courts and the public would not believe that he was a victim of domestic violence.
Schnell analyzed another spike in negative tweets and hashtags against Heard after Waldman allegedly labelled the actress’ claims against Depp as a “hoax” in Aprl 2020. The former attorney told The Daily Mail and Vanity Fair at the time:
“Amber Heard and her friends in the media use fake s*xual violence allegations as both a sword and shield, depending on their needs. They have selected some of her s*xual violence hoax ‘facts’ as the sword, inflicting them on the public and Mr. Depp.”
The expert’s data also showed that the text related to the most popular pro-Depp hashtags included language similar to Waldman’s statement with variations of “hoax,” “fake” or “fraud.” Schnell also claimed that the #JusticeforJohnnyDepp hashtag invoked Waldman’s name more than 26 percent of the time.
Although Schnell admitted that he failed to “get into people’s heads” to identify the source of the social media negativity against Amber Heard, he confirmed that the spike in the three major hashtags against the actress was so large that they took over every other related trend.
