Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary was sued by two nonprofits that he falsely claimed were agents of the Chinese Communist Party for their opposition to his plans for a gargantuan data center in Utah.
The “Shark Tank” personality is developing the world’s largest data center, a 40,000-acre campus in Box Elder County in northwest Utah, a project that has been met with fierce resistance from residents amid a rising tide of national outrage over the water- and electricity-sucking facilities.
In a complaint filed in federal court in Utah on Wednesday, Alliance for a Better Utah founder Joshua Kanter and Elevate Strategies founder Gabrielle Finlayson are claiming that O’Leary defamed them for alleging that they were “proxies” for Beijing.
The lawsuit also names Fox News, a network where “Mr. Wonderful” regularly appears, saying that it kept inviting him on and that hosts endorsed his allegations that plaintiffs were “proxies for the Chinese government” after they publicly denied the claims, which were later walked back by O’Leary. The network has since apologized.
Inbox: Utah Residents Sue Kevin O’Leary and Fox News “for falsely accusing Utah residents of acting as Chinese Communist Party agents to discredit local opposition to proposed AI data center” #utpol
O’Leary has since walked back those accusationshttps://t.co/ZF8Z306EQC pic.twitter.com/yCwEzvXX9L
— Cami Mondeaux (@cami_mondeaux) July 15, 2026
According to the complaint, “O’Leary proceeded to engage in a weekslong smear campaign against Plaintiffs. Across at least ten separate media appearances broadcast to millions of viewers and shared with millions more online, O’Leary repeated his malicious, false claims that Plaintiffs were agents of China and engaging in criminal conduct. In each appearance, O’Leary was unequivocal.”
“He insisted that he was not ‘suggesting’ or ‘inferring’ that Plaintiffs were operating on behalf of a foreign adversary,” the document reads. “Rather, he claimed he had ‘proven it’ thanks to the work of his alleged team of data scientists, adding that he had shared “90 pages of evidence with federal law enforcement.”
“During multiple appearances, he even held up a chart from his team’s purported ‘Investigative Report’ that he suggested contained proof that supported his claims, even though the chart—which was also published online—made no mention of China, the CCP, or any other entity that connected any dots between Plaintiffs and the Chinese government,” the complaint argues.
“Fox was instrumental in O’Leary’s defamatory smear campaign, putting him on air to attack Plaintiffs five times in three weeks. Despite O’Leary’s inherently unreliable claims, and his clear lack of support for them, Fox repeatedly invited O’Leary onto its programs and allowed him to broadcast his false accusations to millions of viewers without any qualification,” the complaint said of the conservative network. “Through its hosts, Fox repeatedly affirmed or outright endorsed O’Leary’s wild statements during his appearances.”
The suit alleges that Finlayson and Kanter were victims of a “smear campaign” and were “singled out” even though they had “barely engaged” with O’Leary’s controversial data center project. The suit seeks compensation for damage to the plaintiffs’ reputations and businesses but doesn’t specify a monetary amount.
Even though the claims were retracted, the plaintiffs argue that the damage was done.
“We’re used to having people disagree with us,” Finlayson said, according to the New York Times. “It’s a whole different thing to have your reputation blown up in a matter of minutes.”
“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 said in a statement posted to his Facebook page on June 25 after he was threatened with legal action.
- O’Leary did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Politico, which first reported the news. Fox News told the outlet that it had “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 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.”
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