Kevin O’Leary, businessman and Shark tank The star is being sued for defamation after he appeared on Fox News and accused some opponents of plans for an artificial intelligence data center in Utah of being backed by China.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in federal district court in Utah by the Coalition for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Gabrielle Finlayson and Josh Kanter. New York Times and Business insider I mentioned. It claimed that as a result of O’Leary’s on-air attacks, Finlayson and Canter suffered “devastating reputational damage, significant economic loss, severe emotional distress, and ongoing threats to their physical safety.”
“Fox played an active role in O’Leary’s smear campaign, putting him on air to attack the plaintiffs five times in three weeks. Despite O’Leary’s inherently unreliable claims, and his apparent lack of support for them, Fox repeatedly invited O’Leary on its programs and allowed him to broadcast his false accusations to millions of viewers without any qualification.”
The lawsuit reportedly cited at least 10 media appearances in May and June in which O’Leary repeated similar accusations, including an appearance on Fox News, where he accused Finlayson and Canter of acting as “agents of the Chinese government.”
In response to the lawsuit, Fox News Media said in a statement that it “publicly corrected the record on every program on which on-air guest Kevin O’Leary’s comments were made, all of which were widely publicized. We will vigorously defend against this lawsuit.”
Hollywood Reporter I also reached out to O’Leary’s attorney for comment.
In an Instagram post last month, Marty Supreme The actor did not apologize for his claims, but said that he “would like to make clear that I have no evidence that the Coalition for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Gabriel Finlayson, Taylor Knuth, or Josh Kanter are funded by China or the Chinese Communist Party.”
