No, USAID didn't pay Hollywood actors millions to visit Ukraine

No, USAID didn’t pay Hollywood actors millions to visit Ukraine | Fact check

Posted by author February 11, 2025 Entertainment

The claim: Video shows E! News reported USAID paid celebrities millions to visit Ukraine

A Feb. 5 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows what appears to be a news report from E! News claiming the U.S. Agency for International Development paid Hollywood actors to visit Ukraine.

“USAID sponsored American celebrity visits to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion began,” reads text on the video, which is accompanied by a voiceover narration. “Angelina Jolie, $20,000,000. Sean Penn, $5,000,000. Jean-Claude Van Damm (sic), $1,500,000. Orlando Bloom, $8,000,000. Ben Stiller, $4,000,000.”

The video uses the E! News logo throughout.

The Facebook post was shared more than 300 times in five days. The video was also spread by Donald Trump Jr. on X.

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Our rating: Manipulated media

The video is a fabrication that wasn’t reported or published by E! News, a company spokesperson said. The video is consistent with material created by a Russia-aligned influence campaign, disinformation experts said.

Actors say claims USAID paid for Ukraine trips are false

President John F. Kennedy created USAID by executive order after signing the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961. The global aid agency has been targeted for apparent dismantling by billionaire Elon Musk, the head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. Trump told reporters he loved “the concept” of USAID but claimed the agency “turned out to be radical left lunatics.”

The video in the Facebook post plays into the scrutiny of the agency by linking USAID to Hollywood celebrities and U.S. support for Ukraine. But the video is not a real news report from E! News. It’s a fabrication that deceptively uses the branding of the entertainment news outlet to spread a false narrative.

An E! News spokesperson who declined to provide a name for attribution said the video is not authentic and not from E! News.

Multiple actors mentioned in the video also said the claims USAID paid them to visit Ukraine were false. Bloom said in an Instagram post that such reports were “untrue.” Stiller wrote in an X post that his trip to Ukraine was “completely self-funded.” Mathew Rosengart, Penn’s longtime lawyer, similarly said in an email that Penn’s travel to Ukraine was “self-funded” and not sponsored by USAID. A spokesperson for Angelina Jolie, who declined to be identified, also told USA TODAY the payment claim was wrong and Jolie has personally covered the cost for all her humanitarian missions.

Fact check: Video altered to show ABC News reported 1 million Ukrainian troop deaths

Patrick Warren, co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University and researcher of online disinformation, said he’s “confident” the video traces back to Russia because it has indicators consistent with the ongoing Russia-aligned Matryoshka influence campaign, including the mimicking of an authentic news outlet, the use of an AI voiceover and the targeting of Ukraine.

This type of Russian malign influence commonly takes advantage of “current news – like U.S. AID – to insert anti-Ukraine messaging into the discourse,” Warren said in an email. He added the video in the Facebook post was first shared on X by an account that “regularly initiates” narratives propagated by the Kremlin-aligned Storm-1516 influence network. The narrative in the fabricated video appeared on Russian state media around the same time the X post was shared and appeared on pro-Russian Telegram channels, Warren said.

Darren Linvill, another co-director of Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub, noted in an X thread that Musk and Trump Jr. amplified the video and that it had “every indication of being a Russian-fabricated video” that never appeared on E! News. Attempts to reach Musk and Trump Jr. for comment were not immediately successful.

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response. Attempts to reach Van Damme for comment were also unsuccessful.

AFP, Lead Stories and PolitiFact also debunked the claim.

Our fact-check sources

E! News spokesperson, Feb. 7, Email exchange with USA TODAY
Mathew Rosengart, Feb. 7, Email exchange with USA TODAY
Angelina Jolie spokesperson, Feb. 7, Email exchange with USA TODAY
Patrick Warren, Feb. 7, Email exchange with USA TODAY
Ben Stiller, Feb. 5, X post
Orlando Bloom, Feb. 7, Instagram post
Darren Linvill, Feb. 5, X thread

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