No, USAID didn’t pay Hollywood actors millions of dollars to visit Ukraine

As President Donald Trump moves to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development by putting nearly all its staff on administrative leave, misinformation about the agency’s spending continues to go viral.

"USAID sponsored American celebrity visits to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion began," said a Feb. 5 video styled as an E! News report. The video says USAID paid $20 million to actress Angelina Jolie, $5 million to actor and director Sean Penn, $1.5 million to Belgian actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, $8 million to Orlando Bloom, and $4 million to comedian Ben Stiller to increase Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s popularity. 

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But the video, which was reshared on X by its owner, Elon Musk and Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. is fabricated.

"The video is not authentic and did not originate from E! News," an E! News spokesperson told PolitFact in an email.

Several celebrities refuted the accusation directly or via spokespeople.

"I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine," Stiller wrote on X in response to the video. "There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind."

Penn’s lawyer, Mathew Rosengart, told PolitiFact in an emailed statement, "USAID funding was never used to pay for Sean Penn’s travel to Ukraine; Mr. Penn self-funded his travel."

We contacted Jolie, Van Damme and Bloom’s spokespeople to ask if they were paid by USAID for their visits to Ukraine, but did not immediately receive a response.

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Donald Trump

stated on March 17, 2025 in a Truth Social post

Former President Joe Biden’s pardons of lawmakers on the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack “are hereby declared void, vacant, and of no further force or effect,” because “they were done by autopen.”

Jolie was a special envoy for the United Nations’ refugee agency when she visited the Ukrainian city of Lviv in 2022. A U.N. spokesperson told NPR in 2022 that Jolie traveled to Ukraine "in her personal capacity."

Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor who studies disinformation, wrote on X that the video has "every indication of being a Russian fabricated video." Linvill said Pravda, Russia’s state-sponsored newspaper, reported about the video. He traced the video to an X account that frequently shares content that is part of Russian disinformation campaigns.

Information from USAID says that employees with a grant from the agency can be reimbursed for travel expenses. But unless the organization has a written travel policy, employees must abide by regulations set by the U.S. State Department, which vary by region.

The maximum daily amount of money that can be reimbursed for lodging, meals and other expenses in Kyiv, Ukraine, is $319, the State Department’s website says.

We rate the claim that an E! News report said USAID paid millions to sponsor American celebrity visits to Ukraine Pants on Fire!