Two Utah residents active in liberal politics sued the celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary for defamation on Wednesday, saying he falsely accused them of acting as Chinese agents when they questioned his plans to build a huge data center near the Great Salt Lake.
Gabi Finlayson, a political strategist, and Josh Kanter, a lawyer and nonprofit founder, said Mr. O’Leary’s accusations, though baseless even by the Shark Tank star’s admission, had upended their lives and businesses and dragged them into a morass of online conspiracies. They said they had been harassed online and falsely labeled illegal agents of the Chinese Communist Party.
“People assume it’s fun or funny,” Ms. Finlayson said. “It’s not. It’s stressful and terrifying.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Utah, was the latest twist in the drama surrounding Mr. O’Leary’s effort to build the world’s largest data center in a remote corner of Utah, a proposal that upended state politics and helped unseat the powerful State Senate president in a Republican primary last month.
According to the suit, Ms. Finlayson and Mr. Kanter became the victims of a “smear campaign” as Mr. O’Leary made multiple appearances on Fox Business Channel deriding critics of his venture as foreign-financed actors.
The suit asks for compensation for the damage to Ms. Finlayson’s and Mr. Kanter’s businesses and reputations, but does not specify a dollar amount.
“We’re used to having people disagree with us,” Ms. Finlayson said, referring to her work as a liberal campaigner in the Republican state of Utah. “It’s a whole different thing to have your reputation blown up in a matter of minutes.”
Mr. O’Leary and Fox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After a lawyer for the pair sent a letter asking for a retraction in June, Mr. O’Leary posted a statement on his Instagram saying he had no evidence that China or the Chinese Communist Party had been funding Ms. Finlayson or Mr. Kanter. Maria Bartiromo, who had hosted Mr. O’Leary on her Fox Business show, issued a similar statement and on-air apology on June 26.
But Matthew Platkin, the former attorney general of New Jersey, who is representing Ms. Finlayson and Mr. Kanter, said the damage was done.
“These are people whose lives have been completely upended,” Mr. Platkin said. “Their reputations have been destroyed because Kevin O’Leary and Fox News didn’t even bother to do the most minor investigations.”
Mr. O’Leary made the comments amid a growing backlash against his plans to build a data center on 40,000 acres of ranching land near the Great Salt Lake in a rural area of northern Utah.
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On May 11, he claimed on Fox Business that he had an analysis showing foreign influence was behind the criticism — specifically, “two cells inside of Utah,” according to the lawsuit. He named Ms. Finlayson and her political firm, Elevate Strategies, and Mr. Kanter and the Alliance for a Better Utah, a progressive nonprofit that Mr. Kanter founded and for which he currently serves as a board member.
“Gabi, what are you doing, and who’s paying you?” Mr. O’Leary asked on the Fox Business show “Mornings With Maria,” hosted by Ms. Bartiromo.
He went on, “These are proxies for the Chinese government.”
Ms. Finlayson and Mr. Kanter said they were shocked to be called out on national television, in part because, they said, they had not been leading critics of Mr. O’Leary’s project.
The Alliance for a Better Utah and Elevate Strategies collaborated on a few social media posts critical of the data center and Utah officials who had supported it. But the suit says the groups “played virtually no role” in the organized opposition.
Mr. Kanter said he had been focused on his private business and had not known much about the data center debate until Mr. O’Leary mentioned him on the air.
“I had no opinion about Kevin O’Leary,” he said.
Ms. Finlayson and Mr. Kanter said neither Mr. O’Leary nor anyone at Fox News reached out to them for comment before or after the segments mentioning them or their organizations.
Ms. Finlayson said she had been driving through a canyon to a speaking event when her phone started to buzz with messages from people who had seen Mr. O’Leary’s comments tearing across social media.
The lawsuit says Mr. O’Leary falsely accused Ms. Finlayson and Mr. Kanter of criminal acts, including acting as unregistered foreign agents and money laundering, and says he claimed to have reported them to federal law enforcement.
It says that Fox News allowed Mr. O’Leary to make his claims multiple times without “questioning, qualifying or verifying them.”
The suit comes three years after Fox News paid $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 elections.
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