All Angelina Jolie wants is for Brad Pitt to “end the fighting” and drop his multimillion-dollar lawsuit against her—but if he won’t, her lawyer said in a new statement, then she is prepared to drag into the light of day evidence he’s “afraid” to have released.
Jolie and Pitt have been engaged in a knockdown, drag-out legal fight since February 2022, when he sued her for selling her half of their French winery the previous year, allegedly violating a verbal agreement they’d made to have him buy her out.
Jolie’s team, meanwhile, have maintained that negotiations to sell to Pitt broke down after he demanded she sign “a nondisclosure agreement that would have contractually prohibited her from speaking outside of court about Pitt’s physical and emotional abuse of her and their children.” Pitt’s lawyers have denied this.
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In early April, their battle took a turn as Jolie’s lawyers filed a motion seeking to obtain all of Pitt’s third-party communications regarding an infamous incident aboard their family’s private plane in 2016, arguing such materials were “highly relevant” to their case. Earlier this week, Pitt’s lawyers responded, slamming the request as “wide-ranging and intrusive” and characterizing it as a “sensationalist fishing expedition,” according to documents obtained by People at the time. They asked that Jolie’s motion be thrown out.
On Wednesday, Jolie’s lawyer, Paul Murphy, told the magazine that Pitt’s alleged demand for an expansive NDA was a bid to “punish and control” her and cover up “his personal misconduct and abuse.”
Murphy continued, “Those actions are central to these proceedings. We are not at all surprised Mr. Pitt is afraid to turn over the documents demonstrating these facts.
“While Angelina again asks Mr. Pitt to end the fighting and finally put their family on a clear path toward healing, unless Mr. Pitt withdraws his lawsuit, Angelina has no choice but to obtain the evidence necessary to prove his allegations wrong,” the lawyer concluded.
A spokesperson for Pitt declined to comment to the magazine on Wednesday.
In their response earlier this week, Pitt’s lawyers claimed the Inglorious Basterds star had “voluntarily offered to produce documents sufficient to show everything that occurred on the flight that precipitated the ex-couple’s divorce—the event that Jolie alleges made Pitt’s NDA request so offensive here.”
But Jolie, Pitt’s lawyers said, rejected his offer “and moved to compel his communications with third parties—including his most trusted advisors—about such sensitive issues as the therapy he voluntarily undertook after the flight incident in an effort to better himself, ‘drug and alcohol testing’ he has allegedly undergone, his alleged ‘overuse or abuse of alcohol,’ and other actions taken in the aftermath of the flight.”
Many of the details surrounding what occurred aboard the 2016 flight remained murky until October 2022, when Jolie filed a cross-complaint that laid out the alleged verbal and physical tirade Pitt went on as the family flew from France to California.
Around 90 minutes after takeoff, Pitt demanded Jolie come to the back of the plane with him, where he yanked her into the bathroom and began yelling at her, the cross-complaint alleges. “Pitt grabbed Jolie by the head and shook her, and then grabbed her shoulders and shook her again before pushing her into the bathroom wall,” it claims.
The filing goes on to allege that Pitt lunged at one of their children who was trying to defend their mother; injured Jolie’s back and elbow when she tried to stop him; “choked one of the children and struck another in the face”; and poured alcohol on Jolie and the children before the plane touched down in Los Angeles.
Jolie filed for divorce five days later, according to the cross-complaint.
Pitt and Jolie married in 2014 after a 10-year relationship. They were declared legally single in 2019, but have yet to finalize their split. The pair share six children: Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, and twins Vivienne and Knox.
“Both sides are still talking,” a source close to the couple told People earlier this month of the divorce proceedings, “but it’s not done yet.”
