O’Leary and Fox face defamation suit over Utah data center claims
Two Utah groups say Kevin O’Leary falsely tied them to China while defending his proposed Stratos data center project.
By Sofia Marchetti · World Affairs Correspondent
3 min read
Kevin O’Leary and Fox News have been sued for defamation over comments tying opposition to his planned Utah data center to the Chinese Communist Party. The case adds a legal fight to the public backlash over the Stratos Project, a large AI computing campus proposed for Box Elder County.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Utah federal court, was brought by Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies and their founders Joshua Kanter and Gabrielle Finlayson. According to the complaint, O’Leary’s statements caused reputational damage, financial losses, emotional distress and threats to the plaintiffs’ safety.
The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory damages to be set at trial, along with punitive damages. They allege O’Leary used repeated media appearances to falsely associate them with the Chinese Communist Party while criticizing opposition to his data center plan.
Claims made on air
The complaint says O’Leary made at least 10 appearances in which he linked the Utah organizations to China. In one Fox Business appearance on “Mornings with Maria,” the lawsuit says O’Leary referred to the groups as “cells” organizing against the project and said, “These two cells, it’s the CPP [sic] at work here. There’s no question about it.”
The suit also cites an appearance on “The Tucker Carlson Show,” where O’Leary said Alliance for a Better Utah and Elevate Strategies were taking material from the “CPP [sic]” and pushing it to people in Utah through his social media feed. The complaint says he made similar claims in other interviews between May 11 and June 3.
Fox News Network is named as a defendant because, according to the lawsuit, it repeatedly gave O’Leary airtime and allowed him to make the accusations to large audiences. Fox News Media told Fortune 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.”
Jeff Neiman, an attorney for O’Leary, told Fortune the lawsuit was a “cash grab” and said the plaintiffs used O’Leary’s comments to raise money. Neiman said the case will put the groups’ operations, funding and coordination under scrutiny in discovery.
Neiman also said O’Leary had clarified his remarks weeks earlier and offered to speak with the organizations. O’Leary posted on Instagram on June 25 that he had “no evidence” Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Gabrielle Finlayson, Taylor Knuth or Josh Kanter were funded by China or the Chinese Communist Party.
Platkin LLP, which represents the plaintiffs, said O’Leary made that clarification only after receiving a legal demand. The firm said Fox apologized and reported on the clarification after O’Leary’s Instagram post, but argued those steps did not remedy the harm alleged in the lawsuit.
Data center dispute
O’Leary’s Stratos Project is planned near the Great Salt Lake in Box Elder County. According to Fortune, the complex could eventually support up to nine gigawatts of AI computing capacity and was originally proposed across 40,000 acres.
The project has drawn criticism from Utah residents over water use, environmental effects and local control. The Salt Lake City Tribune reported that a May 4 public meeting grew heated before Box Elder County commissioners left the room and voted virtually to advance resolutions tied to the project.
Alliance for a Better Utah joined a lawsuit last month challenging the constitutionality of the Military Installation Development Authority, the state-created development body that initially approved the project, according to Fortune. The defamation complaint says Finlayson appeared in one video about the project, while Kanter made no public statements and no longer holds a public-facing role at Alliance, though he remains on its board.
O’Leary later proposed a smaller version of the plan, cutting the overall footprint to 20,000 acres, with 10,000 acres available for data centers and related infrastructure, Fortune reported.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.