Two Utah political organizations sued Kevin O'Leary and on Wednesday, accusing them of defaming the groups by tying them to the Chinese Communist Party in a fight over a data center proposal.
The lawsuit, filed in Utah Federal District Court by Alliance for a Better Utah and Elevate Strategies, names Joshua Kanter and Gabrielle Finlayson among the people who say they were harmed. It seeks damages for what it describes as devastating reputational damage, significant economic losses, severe emotional distress and continuing threats to physical safety.
The filing turns a monthslong media dispute into a courtroom fight. In May, O'Leary blamed alleged Chinese Communist Party-adjacent actors for an influx of bot-written comments opposing his plan to build one of Utah's largest data centers, and the lawsuit says he repeated similar accusations in at least 10 media appearances between May 11 and June 3. Among them, it says, were remarks on Mornings with Maria in which he said, “These two cells, it's the CPP [sic] at work here. There's no question about it,” and on The Tucker Carlson Show, where he said the Utah groups were “taking the content from the CPP [sic], repurposing it, and jamming it down the throats of people in Utah on my social media feed.”
That is where the claim runs into its sharpest problem. The lawsuit says O'Leary later acknowledged he had no evidence that the named Utah organizations or individuals were funded by China or the Chinese Communist Party, a statement that undercuts the certainty of the earlier accusations and gives the plaintiffs their main opening. Network was named as a defendant because the suit says it repeatedly invited O'Leary onto its programs and let him broadcast the charges to millions of viewers without qualification, while Media said it publicly corrected the record on every program where the comments were made.
The case now moves toward a trial that will determine compensatory damages and whatever punitive or exemplary award a jury might consider enough to punish the conduct and discourage a repeat. Jeff Neiman called the suit a cash grab and said the plaintiffs used O'Leary's remarks as a catalyst to raise funds, but the more immediate question is whether a broadcaster can keep airing an accusation this serious after the speaker says he has no proof for it.
