Brad Pitt pushes back on Angelina Jolie’s ‘oppressive and harassing’ request to disclose messages in Miraval case
“These private, third-party communications are far removed from the issues and allegations in this case, and in many cases, they have nothing but the most tenuous relationship to ‘what happened on that plane,’” reads a court document obtained by CNN and filed by Pitt’s attorneys. “Jolie, however, wants them anyway as part of her efforts to turn this business dispute into a re-litigation of the former couple’s divorce case,” the document continues.
Pitt’s attorneys, in a separate filing, called the request “oppressive and harassing” and claim in their initial opposition motion that he “voluntarily offered to produce documents sufficient to show everything that occurred on the flight that precipitated the ex-couple’s divorce .”
“Jolie, however, rejected Pitt’s compromise 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,
CNN has reached out to Jolie’s representatives for comment.
Pitt and Jolie have been locked in a fraught web of legal proceedings since 2016. While the two were declared legally single 2019, their divorce is not yet finalized.
Details surrounding the circumstances of the private plane incident emerged in August 2022, when a heavily redacted FBI report, provided to CNN by a source at the time, revealed that Jolie had accused Pitt of physically assaulting her and verbally abusing their children while they were aboard the private jet, traveling to the US from France.
Pitt became the center of a probe related to the incident but was never arrested or charged, according to an FBI statement at the time.
Their fight over the Miravel property began in February 2022, when Pitt sued Jolie and her former company, Nouvel LLC, over what he claimed was the “unlawful” sale of her stake in Miraval, acquired by the couple in 2008.
Pitt’s lawsuit alleged that he and Jolie had agreed when they purchased the winery that neither would sell without the other’s consent. According to a subsequent 2023 court filing, attorneys for Pitt called Jolie’s sale “vindictive” after an “adverse custody ruling.”
A countersuit filed by Nouvel LLC in September 2022 accused Pitt of “waging a vindictive war against” Jolie and claimed that there was never any such agreement. The countersuit alleges that Jolie attempted to sell her share of the winery to Pitt but the deal fell apart over a provision in a non-disclosure agreement “designed to prohibit Jolie from publicly speaking about the events that had led to the breakdown of their marriage.”
Jolie sold Nouvel LLC and its stake in the winery to Tenute del Mondo, a subsidiary of Stoli Group, controlled by Russian oligarch Yuri Shefler, in October 2021.
Jolie's request for Pitt's private communications extends beyond the flight incident and includes discussions about his post-incident therapy and drug testing. Despite Pitt's voluntary offering of relevant documents, Jolie is pressing for access to his communications with third parties related to entertainment-related matters, such as therapy and alcohol-related issues.
