Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo delivered a rare and embarrassing on-air apology on Friday morning after Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary walked back unsubstantiated claims that opponents of his massive Utah data center project were secretly funded by China.
The roughly 45-second statement, which aired on Mornings with Maria, marked the opening salvo of what media analysts quickly dubbed an unusual network-wide cleanup operation. Bartiromo told viewers that O’Leary had corrected the record and that Fox News had no evidence to support the explosive accusations he had leveled against several Utah-based individuals and organizations.
Bartiromo stated that O’Leary had now acknowledged lacking any proof connecting the Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, or individuals Josh Kanter, Taylor Knuth, and Gabriel Finlayson to China or its Communist Party. She added that Fox News Media similarly knew of no such evidence and apologized for the error.
O’Leary’s China Claims Unravel
The controversy traces back to May, when O’Leary began making the rounds on Fox News and Fox Business to promote the Stratos Project, his ambitious artificial intelligence data center development in Utah that could span up to 40,000 acres. The proposal had already drawn significant pushback from local residents and advocacy groups worried about the project’s impact on water supplies, electricity demand, and the surrounding environment.
Rather than addressing those concerns directly, O’Leary reframed the opposition in national security terms. During a May appearance on Mornings with Maria, he suggested that only one foreign adversary would benefit from slowing American AI development and power grid construction — and that adversary was China. He went further, appearing on The Big Weekend Show on May 24 wearing a “Utah National Security” hat and specifically identifying the Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, and individuals Josh Kanter, Taylor Knuth, and Gabriel Finlayson while suggesting connections to Chinese Communist Party financing. The accused parties denounced the allegations as outlandish and entirely without basis.
On Thursday, O’Leary posted a retraction on social media, acknowledging that he had no evidence linking the named parties to China or the Chinese Communist Party. Notably, his statement stopped well short of an apology — he clarified the record without expressing any remorse for the damage the claims may have caused.
Fox Anchors Fan Out Across Shows
Once O’Leary’s retraction went public, Fox moved swiftly to contain the fallout. The apology did not stay confined to Bartiromo’s program. Host Johnny Joey Jones read a similar statement at the close of The Big Weekend Show, noting that O’Leary had appeared on the program on May 24 and made claims he could no longer support. Anchor Kayleigh McEnany delivered yet another correction during Saturday in America. Altogether, the apology aired across four programs on Fox News and Fox Business, also including The Big Money Show.
Bartiromo also displayed O’Leary’s social media retraction on screen during her broadcast, making the walkback visible to her audience in his own words. The coordinated nature of the effort — the same carefully worded statement read by multiple anchors across multiple programs — was striking for a network not known for public self-correction.
Legal Threat Suspected Behind the Tour
Media analyst Oliver Darcy of Status described the synchronized response as a “coordinated cleanup effort” and called it a rare display of contrition from a network that almost never assumes such a posture. Darcy argued that once O’Leary publicly admitted he had no evidence for his allegations, Fox found itself in an untenable position — having amplified claims the guest himself could not defend.
Darcy suggested the speed and scope of the apology tour pointed toward legal pressure as a likely motivating factor, though the precise catalyst remained unclear. The speculation is not without context. In April 2023, Fox settled a defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, paying over $787 million after airing false allegations about the company’s voting machines and election fraud. That landmark settlement made the network acutely aware of the financial and reputational risks of airing false accusations without adequate verification.
A Debate Bigger Than One Project
Beyond the immediate embarrassment for Bartiromo and Fox, the episode highlights a growing tension playing out across the country as tech companies and investors race to build the infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence. Data centers of the scale O’Leary envisions require enormous quantities of water for cooling and vast amounts of electricity — demands that frequently put developers on a collision course with local communities and environmental advocates.
O’Leary’s attempt to recast that local opposition as enemy-sponsored sabotage may have resonated in certain media circles, but it ultimately collapsed under scrutiny. For Fox News, the multiday apology blitz served as a stark reminder that amplifying a guest’s accusations — no matter how compelling the narrative — carries real consequences when the facts fail to follow.
