An online video claiming The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. government’s main overseas aid agency, paid some Hollywood stars to visit Ukraine has been debunked by the BBC.
The BBC Verify division identified the fake video as part of a Russian disinformation campaign, but only after the false content went viral on social media platforms and was retweeted on X by Elon Musk.
Stars mentioned in the video to have received payments included Angelina Jolie, Sean Pean, Jean Claude Van Dam, Orlando Bloom and Ben Stiller.
The counterfeit video claims the source of the news is “eonline.com,” a claim that was dismissed out of hand by E! News-parent NBCUniversal. “The video is not authentic and did not originate from E! News,” an E! News spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday.
BBC Verify said it has previously investigated the Russian disinformation campaign claimed to be behind the false USAID video.
“These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind,” Stiller tweeted of the video.
The fake video follows the new Trump administration in Washington, D.C. calling for USAID to be disbanded and merged with the U.S. Department of State. Questions have also swirled around Elon Musk’s agenda as the appointed head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The tech billionaire and Tesla founder has in recent months aligned himself with the right-leaning politics of Donald Trump, Reform U.K.’s Nigel Farage and Germany’s far-right AfD party. Musk, who donated generously to and advocated for Trump’s U.S. Presidential re-election campaign, has since become a key adviser in the White House as part of the new administration in Washington, D.C.
