Angelina Jolie claims Brad Pitt choked and hit their kids on a 2016 flight. Brad Pitt sued Angelina Jolie for selling her share of their wine company, and she filed a cross-complaint in response, alleging that he tried to stop her from speaking out about alleged abuse. In her response to Brad Pitt’s lawsuit regarding the wine company they once shared, Angelina Jolie made some shocking new allegations against her ex-husband relating to their 2016 plane incident.
A cross-complaint submitted by Jolie’s attorneys on Tuesday in Los Angeles makes claims regarding the altercation aboard a private plane on September 14, 2016, which prompted Jolie to file for divorce two days later. (Many of the same charges regarding the event from this past August were contained in a redacted FBI report for which Jolie issued an anonymous Freedom of Information Act request earlier this year.)
The new petition states, “Pitt lunged at his own child after one of the kids angrily supported Jolie, and Jolie pulled him from behind to restrain him. Pitt injured Jolie’s back and elbow as he hurled himself backward into the airplane seats to get Jolie off his back. The young people dashed in and valiantly attempted to defend one another. Pitt choked one of the kids and hit another one in the face before it was all done. A few of the kids begged Pitt to stop. All of them were terrified.
The documents allege that Pitt “periodically emerged from the back of the plane to yell and swear at them” and “at one point, he poured beer on Jolie; at another, he poured beer and red wine on the children” over the course of “many tense hours” on the flight.
Jolie “could not take any more abuse” and requested that her representatives handle the negotiations after Pitt allegedly insisted he wouldn’t buy her interests from her unless she signed the “gag order” to keep quiet about the abuse allegations. Jolie “never spoke publicly about the events that led to their separation,” according to the filing, which also mentions the “traumatic breakup of their family and the years spent trying to heal their family.”
According to the filing, Jolie “has gone to great lengths to try to shield their children from reliving the pain Pitt inflicted on the family that day. However, when Pitt filed this lawsuit in an effort to reassert control over Jolie’s financial life and force her to work once again with her ex-husband as a frozen-out business partner, Pitt forced Jolie to publicly defend herself on these issues for the first time.
The request for comment from PEOPLE was not immediately answered by a Pitt representative. Pitt sued Jolie in June, claiming that she “sought to cause harm on” Château Miraval (the vineyard and house they purchased in the South of France back in 2008) by selling her share to a “stranger.” Pitt claimed that they had made a pact never to sell one other’s separate shares of the family firm.
Pitt’s assertion is “false,” according to Tuesday’s cross complaint, and “no such arrangement ever existed.” According to the complaint, Jolie did make Pitt an offer to buy her share, but he allegedly “demanded” that she sign a non-disclosure agreement forbidding her from discussing Pitt’s physical and psychological abuse of her and their children outside of court.
According to the records, “Pitt walked away from the arrangement when Jolie refused to agree to such a condition.” Pitt and Jolie are the parents of Maddox, 21, Pax, 18, Zahara, 17, Shiloh, 16, and twins Vivienne and Knox, who are 14 years old. In 2019, a judge ruled that Pitt and Jolie were legally single. Pitt and Jolie got into a drunken brawl as their family was flying on a private jet from France back to their Los Angeles home, according to an anonymous tip that prompted the FBI and the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services to launch an investigation. On the plane, a source at the time claimed that Pitt became “verbally aggressive” and “physical” with one of their children. Pitt denied any wrongdoing.
By November of that year, the FBI had wrapped up its inquiry without filing any charges against Pitt. DCFS also completed its investigation following the incident earlier that month, but it turned up no evidence of maltreatment.
In an interview with The Guardian last year, Jolie discussed her divorce and said, “I’m not the kind of person who makes decisions like the decisions I had to make lightly. It took a lot for me to reach the point when I felt I had to end my relationship with my children’s father. Jolie claimed she was “broken” by her experiences and that she wished her family, “including their dad,” could find a way to move on. She added that “there’s a lot I can’t say.”
Pitt is accused of “waging a vengeful war against” Jolie ever since she filed for divorce in 2016 and “masterminded” a scheme to “seize control” of the winery, according to Nouvel, Jolie’s former company, which has filed a counter complaint in this case.
Pitt’s legal team said in his case that Jolie “contributed nothing to Miraval’s success” and that via his labor, Miraval “developed into a multimillion-dollar global corporation and one of the world’s most well respected manufacturers of rosé wine.”
The statement by Pitt’s lawyers at the time stated that “Jolie sought and then completed the putative sale in secret, purposefully keeping Pitt in the dark, and intentionally violating Pitt’s contractual rights.”