Actress Angelina Jolie was questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for four hours earlier this month over her estranged husband Brad Pitt’s private plane incident.
Pitt is alleged to have gotten “verbally abusive” and “physical” with their son Maddox, 15, while under the influence of alcohol during a flight on September 14 and Jolie, 41, filed for divorce just days later, citing irreconcilable differences and seeking sole permanent custody.
Jolie sat with the FBI on October 18. “The agents wanted a breakdown of everything that happened from when the plane took off to when it landed. Angelina fully cooperated,” a source told usmagazine.com. The organisation’s investigation was originally supposed to end on October 20, but it is ongoing — as is the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services’s investigation into Pitt.
A source told InTouch magazine: “DCFS could have closed this case and referred the family to a mental health professional. The fact that they didn’t, the fact that they are still involved, shows it’s serious.”
Pitt, 52, missed the deadline on October 19 to respond to Jolie’s divorce petition, seeking to avoid sparking an acrimonious legal battle that could harm the children. The actor will not file an official reply, despite being over the cut-off date, until the estranged couple’s lawyers have reached an agreement over custody, celebrity gossip websites Us Weekly and TMZ reported.
After an anonymous source reported the alleged plane incident, the FBI got involved as they have jurisdiction because the incident occurred in mid-air.
The source added that the FBI “will likely investigate for another few weeks”. After that they “will present the case to the prosecutor, who will evaluate whether they feel the need to bring charges. It could potentially be months”.
Yet both Pitt and Jolie are eager to avoid a court case, with the source explaining: “Neither side wants this to go to court because everything the FBI and DCFS [Department of Children and Family Services] investigated will potentially be made available to the public, which would be bad for the entire family.”
It was later reported that “Maddox suffered no injuries and some witnesses on the jet say Brad’s contact with the boy was inadvertent”.
The two and their children — Maddox, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne — have all been previously interviewed. The DCFS has now expanded its investigation to other alleged incidents.
Jolie and Pitt have agreed on a parenting plan, giving the actress temporary physical custody over the children with Pitt allowed to visit them under the supervision of a therapist. The Allied actor has already been subjected to more than a month of interviews, two voluntary drug tests, which both came back negative.
Pitt, who won a best film Oscar for producing 12 Years a Slave (2013), reportedly visited his other five children on October 8, but Maddox, refused to see him. Pitt met Maddox for the first time since the alleged incident early in the week of October 17.
Further time with Maddox would depend on the severity of the allegations and Maddox’s interest in such visits, she added.
