Another Utahn sues Kevin O'Leary, Fox News over defamation claims

SALT LAKE CITY — Another Utahn is suing Kevin O'Leary and the Fox News Network over defamation claims after the businessman claimed several opponents of his Box Elder County data center project were agents for China.

Taylor Knuth, of Ogden, sued O'Leary and Fox News for defamation and painting him in a false light in the U.S. District Court's District of Utah on Wednesday. Knuth claims O'Leary defamed him by falsely claiming he was an agent of the Chinese government in interviews with the network.

"Kevin O'Leary began disparaging Mr. Knuth on social media and on national television (starting with Fox) claiming that Mr. Knuth, among others far more vocal on the data center issue, was an operative for the Chinese Communist Party and was standing in the way of the data center, apparently to assist broader aims of the Chinese state," Knuth's lawsuit states. "Of course, this was false."

The lawsuit references a May 11 interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo, when O'Leary claimed several critics of his project had ties to the Chinese government.

O'Leary directly identified Knuth, as well as Josh Kanter, the Alliance for a Better Utah, Gabrielle Finlayson and Elevate Strategies, according to a public transcript of the interview provided by Fox News Media. Knuth previously worked as the executive director of Alliance for a Better Utah, but had left the organization a month before the interview, according to his lawsuit.

The lawsuit outlines ten additional times O'Leary repeated similar claims on various platforms over the next several weeks.

"Fox recklessly allowed these statements to be broadcast broadly across its network over a period of time, on multiple occasions, despite Alliance for a Better Utah's direct rejection of the assertions, and the increasingly apparent lack of legitimate evidence O'Leary was able to present," the lawsuit states.

The critics of the data center rejected the claims, and O'Leary later backed off on June 25 in a social media post, saying he had no evidence tying any of them to China.

Bartiromo apologized the following day, saying the network was not aware of any evidence to back up the claims.

Alliance for a Better Utah, Finlayson and Kanter all sued O'Leary and Fox News in July for defamation. The defendants have sought to have that case dismissed.

"Fox News Media publicly corrected the record on every program where on-air guest Kevin O'Leary's comments were made, all of which was extensively publicized," Fox News Media told KSL in a statement in response to the latest lawsuit. "We will vigorously defend against this lawsuit."

An attorney for O'Leary did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Knuth left Alliance for a Better Utah on April 2, according to his lawsuit, which said his "participation in the controversy surrounding O'Leary's project was limited to voicing his opinion on the project through a few social media posts and personal communications directed toward individuals already within Knuth's social sphere."

Knuth claims he was searching for a new job at the time the claims were first circulated, but said "he found his job leads drying up and business prospects withering" as a result of the claims.

He asked the court to award compensatory damages, punitive damages and to have his court fees reimbursed. He also asked for a permanent injunction preventing both defendants from making additional "disparaging statements" against him.

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