Kevin O’Leary sued after claiming data centre opponents were foreign agents

Fox News has also been named in the suit for airing O’Leary’s comments

Published Jul 20, 2026  •  Last updated 7 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

Kevin O'Leary attends the 83rd Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton on January 11, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California. Photo by Amy Sussman /Getty Images

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Kevin O’Leary is facing a defamation lawsuit from two opponents of his proposed data centre in Utah.

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Two Utah residents claim the Shark Tank star falsely accused them of acting as Chinese agents when they questioned his data centre plans in a rural area of northern Utah, near the Great Salt Lake.

The lawsuit was filed on July 15 in a Utah federal court by Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Gabrielle Finlayson, and Josh Kanter, the New York Times reported.

The filing alleges that after Mr. Wonderful appeared on Fox News and made the false foreign-agent accusations, Finlayson and Kanter “suffered devastating reputational harm, significant economic losses, severe emotional distress, and ongoing threats to their physical safety,” per the Times.

Fox News has also been named in the suit for airing O’Leary’s comments.

What the lawsuit claims

“Fox was instrumental in O’Leary’s defamatory smear campaign, putting him on air to attack Plaintiffs five times in three weeks,” the complaint reads regarding the vocal businessman’s claims that the pair were operatives backed by the Chinese Communist Party.

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“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 lawsuit listed at least 10 media appearances — including his Fox News appearance — in May and June where the Marty Supreme actor repeated similar accusations and accused Finlayson and Kanter of serving as “proxies for the Chinese government.”

On May 11, O’Leary appeared on Fox Business show Mornings with Maria, hosted by Maria Bartiromo, claiming he had data showing foreign influence was behind the criticism of his plans to build a data centre on 40,000 acres of ranching land — specifically, “two cells inside of Utah,” according to the suit.

He went on to name Finlayson and her political firm, Elevate Strategies, and Kanter and the Alliance for a Better Utah, a nonprofit for which Kanter founded and serves as a board member.

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“Gabi, what are you doing, and who’s paying you?” O’Leary asked on the show, referring to Finlayson.

What Fox News and O’Leary say of 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.”

After a lawyer for Finlayson and Kanter sent a letter asking for a retraction in June, O’Leary took to Instagram saying 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.”

Bartiromo also issued a similar statement on her show on June 26, the Times reported.

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But the damage was done, according to the pair’s lawyer, former attorney general of New Jersey Matthew Platkin.

“These are people whose lives have been completely upended,” Platkin told the outlet.

“Their reputations have been destroyed because Kevin O’Leary and Fox News didn’t even bother to do the most minor investigations.”

Finlayson and Kanter have maintained that they and their organizations “played virtually no role” in leading critics of O’Leary’s project and claimed that neither O’Leary nor Fox News reached out to them for comment before or after segments aired that called them out.

Jeffrey Neiman, O’Leary’s lawyer, said in a statement to Business Insider that the case a “cash grab” and that Finlayson and Kanter declined an invitation to discuss the project.

“The plaintiffs have put their operations, funding, and coordination squarely at issue,” Neiman said.

“We welcome that, and we look forward to discovery and uncovering the facts related to the misinformation campaign against the data center in Utah.”

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