Russia Faked Julia Roberts, Robert De Niro and Jeri Ryan Attacking Democrats — None of Them Said a Word

A Bloomberg News investigation published October 16, 2026 reviewed 130 fabricated videos and doctored newspaper front pages circulated between September 10 and October 9, nearly all of them targeting Democratic candidates ^[3]. The review, corroborated by the research groups Graphika and dTeam and first documented by the collective Antibot4Navalny, found automated bot networks inflating view counts — some posts hit roughly 200,000 views within an hour before "quickly plateauing," pushed by accounts that had sat dormant for years and generated almost no genuine likes or reposts relative to their view counts ^[3][4]. Jeri Ryan, shown in one clip appearing to say the country had been "taken over by perverted Democrats," told AFP the video was "obvious propaganda" and said she is in fact a Democratic voter, calling the identity theft "incredibly violating" ^[2]. Eric Roberts said he was "deeply troubled" that his likeness was manipulated to deceive the public, and actor Ed Begley Jr. said he had no idea the activity was happening and disagreed with the video's content ^[1][2]. CNN itself objected to the unauthorized use of its branding, stating the videos "have no affiliation with CNN" and were not produced or distributed by the network ^[1][2]. Real actors, real voices in some clips, real network logos — none of it authentic, and all of it confirmed fake by the people and the network it impersonated.

Disinformation researchers attributed the campaign to Matryoshka, also known as Operation Overload — a Kremlin-linked influence network first identified by Antibot4Navalny in 2023 based on its distribution and amplification patterns ^[1][4]. Clemson University researcher Darren Linvill called the wave the "first salvo" in Russia's targeting of the November vote, while the Institute for Strategic Dialogue's Pablo Maristany de las Casas said the low-effort, Cameo-based tactics matched Matryoshka's prior playbook in German, Hungarian and Armenian elections ^[1]. Per Bloomberg's review, the campaign targeted Democratic candidates in 20 of 35 contested Senate races and 29 of 36 gubernatorial races on the November 3 ballot, including a fake ABC News-branded banner falsely claiming Texas Senate nominee James Talarico paid OnlyFans models, and a fake CBS News clip falsely claiming Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff had eight undeclared properties — claims no public records support ^[3]. The MIT AI Risk Repository's incident database logged the operation with "High" confidence, citing U.S. intelligence officials and the threat-analysis firm Graphika, and recorded that some posts were removed from X, Bluesky and TikTok after the fakery was exposed ^[5]. This wasn't one rogue meme — it's a documented, month-long foreign operation spanning dozens of candidates and a coordinated bot-amplification infrastructure.

FALSE. None of the named actors — Hannigan, Caulfield, Parker, Julia Roberts, Eric Roberts, Begley or Ryan — made the statements attributed to them, and CNN did not produce or air any of the videos bearing its branding ^[1][2]. The underlying footage is real in places (a 2023 Gucci campaign clip, Cameo recordings the actors genuinely filmed for other purposes), but the political statements layered onto it are fabricated audio, and the news-network graphics are forged ^[1][2]. Researchers tie the operation to the Kremlin-linked Matryoshka/Operation Overload network, and Bloomberg's review found it ran for at least a month across dozens of competitive House, Senate and governor's races before the November 3 midterms ^[1][3][4]. If a celebrity appears to be denouncing a political party in a video with a major network's logo on it, verify it against that network's own channels before sharing — in this case, CNN, the actors themselves, and independent researchers all say it's fake.