LOS ANGELES - JAN 19: Producer Ben Stiller arrives for the 30th Annual Producers Guild Awards on January 19, 2019 in Beverly Hills, CA. (Photo credit: DFree / Shutterstock)
Hollywood actor Ben Stiller took to social media Wednesday to swat away what he called "lies coming from Russian media" — and promoted by Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor who was indicted along with Donald Trump and 17 others in Georgia's election interference case.
Powell – who has a history of promoting baseless conspiracies — shared a video Wednesday morning from a right-wing account with the watermark "E News" in which a narrator said the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, sponsored American celebrity visits to Ukraine following Russia's invasion.
The video continues, citing no evidence or sourcing, that major celebrity actors Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Jean-Claude Van Damm, Orlando Bloom and Ben Stiller each raked in millions from the agency to boost Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity.
The video got a hefty endorsement from Powell, who reshared the video on X.
"Here’s another one #DigitalSoldiers! Keep them coming. It’s a lot of fraud and corruption to pick apart. Also list the names of people who got the money! #USAID has apparently been one big slush fund for anything the Left wanted," she wrote in sharing the video.
X's "Community notes" tool smacked down the video, noting the reporting is nowhere to be found on eonline.com.
To boot, Stiller himself came out and forcefully denied the accusations.
"Totally false. Untrue. 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 personal payments," he wrote on X.
Video from June 2022 showed Stiller shaking Zelensky's hand and calling him "my hero." In a lighter moment, Stiller complimented Zelensky on his "great acting career," to which Zelensky responded, “Not as great as you," as the two laughed.
Watch a clip of Stiller's visit to Ukraine below or at this link.