Kevin O’Leary built his brand on being the guy who tells hard truths. But now a federal lawsuit says one of his most dramatic claims wasn’t a truth at all.
Two Utah nonprofit leaders say O’Leary spent weeks calling them Chinese Communist Party operatives on national television — without a shred of proof to back it up.
And the legal fallout from those accusations has now landed squarely on both O’Leary and Fox News.
What O’Leary Said — and How Many Times He Said It
The lawsuit was filed by Alliance for a Better Utah founder Joshua Kanter and Elevate Strategies founder Gabrielle Finlayson, who contend O’Leary repeatedly accused them of working on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party while discussing opposition to his plan to build a 40,000-acre data center in Utah.
This wasn’t a one-time slip. The lawsuit alleges that in at least 10 media appearances, O’Leary embarked on what the complaint calls a “smear campaign” to link Alliance for a Better Utah and Elevate Strategies with the Chinese Communist Party.
In O’Leary’s first alleged attack, according to the lawsuit, he labeled the two organizations as “cells” that were organizing opposition to his data center project during an interview on the *Mornings with Maria* show. “These two cells, it’s the CPP [sic] at work here. There’s no question about it,” O’Leary said during the interview.
In another interview on *The Tucker Carlson Show*, O’Leary also alleged Alliance for a Better Utah and Elevate Strategies were “taking the content from the CPP [sic], repurposing it, and jamming it down the throats of people in Utah on my social media feed.”
O’Leary, 72, insisted during multiple appearances on the network that he had hired a team of data scientists that discovered “two cells inside of Utah” who were working under the instruction of the Chinese Communist Party, identifying those “cells” as Alliance for a Better Utah and Elevate Strategies and calling out their founders explicitly.
And Fox kept putting him on. Fox, the plaintiffs claim, affirmed or outright endorsed O’Leary’s statements by inviting him five times in three weeks on various programs to air them — even after the plaintiffs immediately and vociferously denied O’Leary’s claims.
It was only after receiving a legal demand for a retraction and compensation, the plaintiffs say, that O’Leary said in a social media post that he had no evidence that the Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, or Kanter and Finlayson were funded by China or the Chinese Communist Party.
The Retraction That Came Too Late
“Recently I appeared on various news programs and would like to clarify that I have no evidence that Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Gabrielle Finlayson, Taylor Knuth or Josh Kanter are funded by China or the Chinese Communist Party,” O’Leary posted in a statement on Instagram in late June.
Fox News followed with its own corrections. Maria Bartiromo, on whose show O’Leary made the baseless claim, issued an apology for her guest’s remarks.
“Mr. O’Leary has now corrected the record and explained that he has no evidence that the Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Josh Kanter, Taylor Knuth, or Gabriel Finlayson are funded by China or the Chinese Communist Party,” Bartiromo said on her show. “Fox News Media is likewise aware of no evidence that they are funded by, acting at the direction of, or coordinating with Chinese interests in opposing Kevin O’Leary’s project.”
But Kanter and Finlayson say the damage was already done. Despite the network’s apology and O’Leary’s backtracking, Kanter and Finlayson argued that the reputational damage had already been done, and also cited the fact that O’Leary’s segments remain publicly available on Fox’s digital platforms.
The suit, filed in Utah Federal District Court, alleges the Shark Tank star’s comments caused “devastating reputational harm, significant economic losses, severe emotional distress, and ongoing threats to their physical safety.”
Worth noting: although the Alliance and Elevate had published several posts criticizing the project, the complaint says Finlayson appeared in only one video about the project, while Kanter made no public statements about it and no longer holds a public-facing role with Alliance, though he remains on its board.
Fox News is not backing down. “FOX News Media publicly corrected the record on every program where on-air guest Kevin O’Leary’s comments were made, all of which was extensively publicized,” Fox News said in a statement. “We will vigorously defend against this lawsuit.”
The Bigger Picture Behind the Data Center Fight
None of this happens without the Stratos Project. The dispute centers on O’Leary’s ambitious Stratos Project, a proposed AI and data center development in northern Utah that originally covered roughly 40,000 acres before later being scaled back amid public opposition.
Supporters argue the project would position America to compete in the global race for artificial intelligence infrastructure. Critics have focused on environmental concerns, water consumption, electrical demand, and local development issues.
Those are legitimate concerns worth debating on the merits. The question the lawsuit puts squarely before a federal court is whether O’Leary chose to bypass that debate entirely and torch the reputations of two private citizens instead.
And there’s a detail in the complaint that makes this harder to dismiss as a simple misunderstanding. O’Leary insisted that he wasn’t suggesting or inferring that the Utah nonprofit and consulting firm were operating on behalf of a foreign adversary — he claimed he had proven it based on the work of a team of data scientists. That’s not hedging. That’s a flat declaration of fact, repeated across ten separate television appearances, aimed at named individuals.
O’Leary’s own retraction undercut that claim completely. And the lawsuit is now asking a federal judge to decide what the consequences should be.
The broader issue here isn’t really about Fox News or one celebrity investor. China’s actual influence operations in American civic life are a documented, serious threat — one that deserves rigorous scrutiny. But when accusations get thrown around without evidence against private citizens who raised legitimate questions about a development project, it muddies the water on a national security issue that genuinely matters. Crying wolf on CCP influence doesn’t protect America from CCP influence. It just gives the CCP’s defenders a talking point.
O’Leary built a television career on the idea that he’s the one person in the room willing to say the uncomfortable thing. But there’s a difference between uncomfortable truths and unsubstantiated accusations. That distinction is now in the hands of a federal court in Utah.
Whether Fox News bears liability for repeatedly platforming the claims after the denials were already on the record — that’s the question that could make this case genuinely consequential, well beyond the original data center fight that started it all.
Sources: Mediaite, Politico, Fortune, Courthouse News Service, The Daily Beast, Daily Caller News Foundation, The Daily Bo Snerdley