JD Vance's firm invested in food company now facing lawsuits

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A high-tech indoor farming company in Appalachia promoted by JD Vance and financed in part by his venture capital firm is facing five lawsuits alleging it misled regulators and duped investors.

The shareholder suits against Morehead, Kentucky-based AppHarvest were filed between November 2021 and August 2022 by individual investors and a county retirement association. They allege the agricultural startup, where Vance also briefly sat on the board, repeatedly overstated its hiring and retention figures, including in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings that investors use to evaluate companies. The suits also argue that investors were misled by press releases, analyst presentations and other public statements, including an interview the company's chief executive gave to The Associated Press touting a hiring spree.

Lawsuits of this kind were not unexpected as the newly public AppHarvest’s stock price plummeted. Since last year, equity incentive and stock purchase plans that Vance and other AppHarvest directors set up for the company’s mostly Appalachian workforce have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in value. Ohio teachers also lost more than $100,000 in retirement savings in AppHarvest’s decline before the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio sold its 16,000 shares in June.

The suits could raise additional questions, though, about one of the central narratives of Vance’s U.S. Senate campaign: that he left behind a lucrative business career in San Francisco's tech world to focus on revitalizing Appalachia. Some of those efforts have already come under scrutiny. In a region that has been devastated by opioid addiction, for instance, he has faced criticism for launching an anti-drug charity that enlisted a doctor with ties to a major pharmaceutical company. Vance's campaign said he was unaware of those ties.