Angelina Jolie has decided to end her legal pursuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI over documents related to an alleged 2016 incident involving her then-husband, Brad Pitt. Under the alias “Jane Doe,” Jolie, 49, had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2021 to obtain FBI records about the incident. According to court documents obtained by PEOPLE, the actress dropped the case on Wednesday, Sept. 25.
The incident in question, which allegedly occurred on a private plane on Sept. 14, 2016, involved a reportedly intoxicated Pitt, 60, and is said to have contributed to Jolie’s decision to file for divorce just days later. The redacted FBI documents Jolie had been seeking were part of a larger investigation into the altercation, which allegedly involved Pitt becoming “verbally abusive” and “physical” with one of their children. Jolie and Pitt’s six children—Maddox, 23, Pax, 20, Zahara, 19, Shiloh, 18, and 16-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox—were reportedly present during the altercation.
In late 2016, both the FBI and the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) conducted investigations into the incident. The FBI ultimately closed its case without charging Pitt, while DCFS also found no evidence of abuse.
In 2022, amid a separate legal dispute over their French vineyard, Château Miraval, Jolie responded to a lawsuit from Pitt by providing new details about the 2016 incident, claiming that Pitt “choked one of the children and struck another in the face.” A source close to Pitt responded to these allegations, stating, “It’s incredibly sad that she continues to rehash, revise, and reimagine her description of an event that happened six years ago, adding in completely untrue information.”
When the FOIA case first surfaced in 2022, attorney Amanda Kramer, representing the anonymous “Jane Doe,” stated, “Victims and survivors should be able to access federal agency records of crimes they experienced or reported, as is common at the state level, so they can advocate for help and trauma care and legal protection for their children and themselves.” Despite years of seeking these records, Jolie was reportedly “stonewalled,” leading her to take the case to court. However, as of Sept. 25, the case has been dropped.