{"id":7364,"date":"2026-07-16T06:20:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T01:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=7364"},"modified":"2026-07-16T06:20:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T01:20:37","slug":"fox-news-and-kevin-oleary-are-sued-over-claim-that-nonprofits-worked-for-chinese-communist-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=7364","title":{"rendered":"Fox News and Kevin O\u2019Leary Are Sued Over Claim That Nonprofits Worked for Chinese Communist Party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5429507\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5429507\" class=\"wp-image-5429507 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/am11.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2023\/03\/AP22348699767133-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Kevin O&apos;Leary\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-5429507\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tom Williams\/CQ Roll Call via AP Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Shark Tank<\/em> star <strong>Kevin O&#8217;Leary<\/strong> and Fox News were sued Wednesday by two Utah nonprofit leaders who allege they were falsely portrayed on air as agents of the Chinese Communist Party during a dispute over the businessman&#8217;s massive proposed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sltrib.com\/news\/2026\/05\/19\/kevin-oleary-data-center-timeline\/\">data center<\/a> project.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.utd.165722\/gov.uscourts.utd.165722.1.0.pdf\">lawsuit<\/a> was filed by Alliance for a Better Utah founder <strong>Joshua<\/strong> <strong>Kanter<\/strong> and Elevate Strategies founder <strong>Gabrielle<\/strong> <strong>Finlayson<\/strong>, who contend O&#8217;Leary repeatedly accused them of working on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party while discussing opposition to his plan to build a 40,000-acre data center in Utah.<\/p>\n<p>According to Politico&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/07\/15\/fox-news-kevin-oleary-sued-over-china-claims-against-data-center-critics-01000239?utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;utm_medium=twitter\">reporting<\/a>, O&#8217;Leary made similar allegations across at least 10 Fox News appearances, telling viewers the pair were &#8220;proxies for the Chinese government.&#8221; The complaint alleges O&#8217;Leary claimed his accusations were backed by evidence from an investigation conducted by data scientists.<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs argue the claims were false and defamatory, alleging Fox News continued booking O&#8217;Leary while network hosts affirmed or echoed the allegations even after both Kanter and Finlayson publicly denied them.<\/p>\n<p>Although O&#8217;Leary later <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/kevinolearytv\/status\/2070227278169059350?s=20\">withdrew his accusations<\/a> after receiving legal threats and Fox News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/news\/fox-news-delivers-on-air-apology-over-kevin-olearys-unsubstantiated-claims-linking-opponents-of-his-data-center-project-to-china\/\">issued an apology<\/a>, the lawsuit contends the retraction came only after the alleged damage had already been done. According to the complaint, the plaintiffs suffered reputational, financial, and emotional harm as a result of the broadcasts.<\/p>\n<p>The dispute initially arose after Kanter and Finlayson&#8217;s opposed the proposed data center, a project that has drawn additional criticism from other local groups over its potential impact and development plans. The lawsuit argues that, rather than responding to those concerns on the merits, O&#8217;Leary launched a public campaign falsely tying the nonprofit leaders to the Chinese government.<\/p>\n<p>Politico reported that O&#8217;Leary did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;FOX News Media publicly corrected the record on every program where on-air guest Kevin O\u2019Leary\u2019s comments were made, all of which was extensively publicized,&#8221; Fox News said in a statement to Mediaite. &#8220;We will vigorously defend against this lawsuit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/news\/fox-news-and-kevin-oleary-are-sued-over-claim-that-nonprofits-worked-for-chinese-communist-party\/\">Fox News and Kevin O\u2019Leary Are Sued Over Claim That Nonprofits Worked for Chinese Communist Party<\/a> first appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\">Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Williams\/CQ Roll Call via AP Images Shark Tank star Kevin O&#8217;Leary and Fox News were sued Wednesday by two Utah nonprofit leaders who allege they were falsely portrayed on air as agents of the Chinese Communist Party during a dispute over the businessman&#8217;s massive proposed data center project. The lawsuit was filed by Alliance&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/am11.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2023\/03\/AP22348699767133-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}