Angelina Jolie has claimed Brad Pitt tried to make her sign an $8.5 million non-disclosure agreement to ‘force her silence’ about her abuse allegations against him.
Jolie, 49, filed for divorce against Pitt, 60, in September 2016, after a mysterious dispute on a private plane in the presence of their son Maddox, now 22.
Early in the proceedings, the FBI looked into allegations that Pitt became ‘physical’ with Maddox on the jet, but the investigation was closed with no charges filed.
However, in court documents she filed this April, Jolie accused Pitt of having been abusive to her ‘well before’ the plane ride.
Now, in the course of the ongoing legal battle over their winery in the South of France, Jolie has repeated the abuse claim, in a new filing obtained by People.
DailyMail.com has reached out to representatives for Pitt and Jolie for comment.
Jolie and Pitt first acquired the winery, the Chateau Miraval, in 2008 when they had been romantically involved for years but were not yet married.
The feud over the property stems from the fact Jolie sold her half to Russian billionaire Yuri Shefler for $62 million in 2021, amid her divorce proceedings.
Pitt sued her over the sale, insisting that she was contractually obligated to obtain his consent before offloading her portion of the Chateau Miraval.
Amid the collapse of their marriage, Pitt and Jolie also plunged into a rancorous custody battle over their six children, four of whom are now adults.
They conceived three biological children – Shiloh, 18, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 16 – and also adopted Maddox, 22, Pax, 20, and Zahara, 19.
Jolie submitted her latest legal filing in the winery case to the Los Angeles County Superior Court on July 25, bringing up both the custody battle and abuse claims.
Her legal team insisted that when she sold her half of the Chateau Miraval, she ‘was not acting with malice and the intent to hurt Pitt in response to any custody ruling.’
The documents asserted: ‘Instead, it was Pitt who refused to buy her interest unless he received his newly expanded NDA, enforceable by an $8.5 million holdback specifically designed to force her silence about his abuse and cover-up.’
Her attorneys added: ‘While Pitt advances what is effectively an outdated privacy-of-domestic-violence argument to shield his abuse, his argument is not the law, at least not in this century, and he cites no authority that would give him such unwarranted protections. In any event, he waived any privacy protections when he sued Jolie.’
Jolie’s team has previously argued Pitt should be made to turn over his personal communications as part of discovery in the winery case.
Pitt has pushed back against the ‘wide-ranging’ and ‘intrusive’ demand, with his lawyers claiming Jolie wanted access to information ‘about such sensitive issues as therapy he voluntarily undertook’ after the plane ride.
However, he maintained that he had been willing to turn over ‘documents sufficient to show everything that occurred on the flight.’
In legal documents submitted July 15, Pitt’s team accused Jolie of attempting to ‘turn this business dispute into a re-litigation of the former couple’s divorce case.’
They put forward the view that Pitt’s ‘private, third-party communications’ from the period of the 2016 plane ride were not pertinent to the Chateau Miraval lawsuit.
However, in her court filing last week, Jolie’s team remained firm in their insistence that Pitt should have to submit communications relevant to her abuse claims.
‘Jolie has no desire to litigate these issues and for years never publicly discussed any of it,’ the legal documents alleged. ‘Rather than appreciate her discretion, Pitt sought to contractually mandate and enforce it.’
They added: ‘Because she refused, he seeks to punish her, demanding $67 million plus punitive damages. In so doing, Pitt placed his conduct squarely at issue. While Jolie sincerely wishes Pitt would end this litigation and finally put their family on a clear path toward healing, that cannot happen while Pitt relentlessly pursues her.’
In May, a judge ordered Jolie to turn over ‘all NDAs to which she is a party,’ complying with with a request made by Pitt’s team in legal papers obtained by DailyMail.com.
Jolie previously claimed that she refused to sell her half of the Chateau Miraval to Pitt because the NDA he had insisted on as a condition was ‘controlling and punishing.’
However, Pitt’s attorneys shot back that her objection to the NDA was a ‘pure pretext’ for the sale to Shefler, whose business empire includes Stolichnaya vodka.
They argued that it was normal for public figures to seek NDAs, asserting that Jolie had also availed herself of the measure in the past.
‘For example, fewer than six months after the sale to Stoli, Jolie’s lawyer proposed an ever broader, mutual non-disparagement clause to Pitt, in connection with resolving the couple’s divorce, and Jolie has signed or requested comparable NDAs from others,’ Pitt’s lawyers alleged in a legal filing in May.
Pitt’s team requested that Jolie be ordered to turn over all her NDAs, as well as other related documents, and a judge granted the motion.
He allegedly remains estranged from his children, to the point that this May, after turning 18, Shiloh filed to have her surname changed from Jolie-Pitt to simply Jolie.
Meanwhile Pax recently suffered a terrifying accident when he crashed his dirt bike into a car in Los Angeles while not wearing a helmet.
Sources informed DailyMail.com that Jolie was ‘by his side in hospital,’ while ‘Brad is distraught and worried over Pax’s accident, but he is unable to reach him.’
The accident came four years after Pax unleashed an explosive social media rant calling his father a ‘world class a**hole’ and a ‘terrible and despicable person’ who had caused his four younger children to ‘tremble in fear.’
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Source: USA Today
