A Utah state senator has apologized for sharing Kevin O’Leary’s claim that China funded opponents of the Box Elder County data center proposal.
“Oops. I was duped. Sorry everyone,” Sen. Todd Weiler, a Woods Cross Republican, posted on X late Monday night.
Earlier this month, Weiler, who is part of Senate leadership as the parliamentarian, shared a six-post thread summarizing reporting from local television news stations. That reporting focused on O’Leary’s claims in a since-deleted social media post that his company allegedly “conducted a digital audit and traced a large amount of the activity” back to the nonprofit Alliance for a Better Utah.
That audit, O’Leary claimed, had found the funding for the group “appears tied to Chinese linked funding channels connected through an organization called Arabella.” O’Leary also accused political consulting firm Elevate Strategies of working with the Chinese government to push misinformation about the data center.
Last week, O’Leary walked those comments back in a Facebook post and appears to have deleted multiple social media posts where he pushed the theory. Anchors on two Fox News channels also issued apologies.
