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Since The Office ended, Brian Baumgartner—who played the show’s subdued, perfunctory “Kevin Malone”—has made a second career for himself as one of the top earners on Cameo, the website that allows celebrities to leave personalized messages for fans. A report in 2021 claimed that Baumgartner had made over a million dollars through Cameo videos alone.
However, it would appear that, in one case, Baumgartner’s friendly online videos accidentally contributed to an aggressive disinformation campaign aimed at toppling the current president of Moldova. A new report from Wired claims that Baumgartner was one of a number of celebrities who recently made a Cameo video decrying the President Maia Sandu. “We, Hollywood stars, support the people of Moldova in their desire to overthrow you, Sandu,” the actors said. That video was subsequently tied into what has been described as a “tide of disinformation unprecedented in complexity and aggression” aimed at the tiny eastern European nation.
To find evidence of this development, Wired dug through a web archived report from DFRLab, a research group attached to the Atlantic Council, that had written about the video. Wired also cites a previous report from NPR that notes the unfortunate trend of celebrities being unwittingly tied into online propaganda campaigns.
The reason that Moldova may be getting targeted with disinformation is that it is currently in the middle of a contentious presidential election. Sandu, the current president, is seeking re-election against her opponent, Alexandr Stoianoglo, a candidate who has been described as more “Russia-friendly.” The country has also been readying for a referendum on whether it should join the European Union or not. On Monday, early returns showed that Moldovans had backed the referendum by a very thin margin. Russia has consistently sought to keep the nations along its border (Moldova is one) from joining Western coalitions. Some observers of the Ukraine war have claimed that Russia was primarily motivated to invade the country because of ongoing conversations around it joining NATO.
Seeing as Baumgartner is one of the top-earning stars on Cameo, it stands to reason that he may not have known what he was getting into. Gizmodo reached out to the actor through AAE Speakers, which purports to represent him for speaking events. We also reached out to Cameo.
Disinformation has become a key weapon governments use against vulnerable populations. The West has repeatedly accused Russia of using digital propaganda to manipulate the politics of liberal democracies. That said, it is hardly a practice contained to Russia. Last year, employees of an Israeli psychological war contractor were caught on camera bragging that their business had been involved in as many as 30 elections all over the world. A research report published in 2021 suggested that as many as 81 different countries were engaged in spreading disinformation campaigns, including the U.S.
