Kevin O’Leary, a businessman and Shark Tank star, is being sued for defamation after going on Fox News and accusing some opponents of his Utah AI data center plans of being backed by China.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in a Utah federal district court by Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Gabrielle Finlayson and Josh Kanter, The New York Times and Business Insider reported. It alleged that as a result of O’Leary’s on-air attacks, Finlayson and Kanter “suffered devastating reputational harm, significant economic losses, severe emotional distress, and ongoing threats to their physical safety.”
“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 stated.
The suit reportedly listed at least 10 media appearances in May and June where O’Leary repeated similar accusations, including his Fox News appearance, where he accused Finlayson and Kanter of serving as “proxies for the Chinese government.”
In response to the suit, Fox News Media said in a statement that it “publicly corrected the record on every program where on-air guest Kevin O’Leary’s comments were made, all of which was extensively publicized. We will vigorously defend against this lawsuit.”
The Hollywood Reporter has also reached out to O’Leary’s attorney for comment.
In an Instagram post last month, the Marty Supreme actor didn’t apologize for his claims, but said he “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.”
