CAA will continue to represent journalist Olivia Nuzzi after her ex-fiancé, journalist Ryan Lizza, accused Nuzzi and her agent, Rachel Adler, of plotting a strategy to defame him.
In his latest dispatch on Nuzzi’s relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the fallout from it, Lizza accused Adler of conspiring to plant false items about him in the press to help protect Nuzzi’s — and Kennedy’s — reputation.
“CAA is a multibillion-dollar corporate behemoth, and Rachel was using the company’s reputation and resources to defame me on behalf of Olivia, Bobby Kennedy, and the Trump campaign,” Lizza wrote. “It is shocking that she still has a job there.”
A CAA spokesperson declined to comment to TheWrap regarding Adler’s alleged conduct. However, an agency insider told TheWrap that Adler denied Lizza’s allegations when asked about them by CEO and co-chairman Bryan Lourd, and Adler is not expected to face negative repercussions.
As for a Nuzzi, a source familiar with the matter told TheWrap that she remains an agency client and that Adler, who leads CAA’s news department, still represents her.
While technically a client, the insider noted that CAA did not sell her book and the agency is not actively representing her at this time.
Lizza’s fifth part — and its accusations against Nuzzi and Adler — came nearly a week after Vanity Fair and Nuzzi said they would part ways after a three-month stint following new questions over Nuzzi’s alleged journalistic ethical violations.
Nuzzi had joined Vanity Fair in September as West Coast editor, part of a comeback after her exit last year from New York magazine in the wake of the Kennedy revelations. Nuzzi also released her memoir, “American Canto,” recounting her relationship with Kennedy, earlier this month to underwhelming sales.
Meanwhile, Lizza kicked off a Substack series in which he has accused Nuzzi of having an affair with former Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), claiming the incident helped derail the their planned 2020 election book, and suggested she she served as a quasi-political operative for Kennedy during the 2024 race.
Lizza alleged on Wednesday that Nuzzi, Adler and former CNN communications executive Matt Dornic tried to concoct multiple ways last year of preventing reporter Oliver Darcy from publishing the story revealing Nuzzi’s relationship with Kennedy. One measure included a false claim that Lizza made up the relationship, which Darcy did not believe because he had already spoken to Lizza.
Another was a claim that, if Darcy published the story, it would send Lizza into a fit of rage and endanger Nuzzi. Lizza said Darcy confirmed to him that Adler made the claim to him and was his main point of contact on the story. Darcy declined to comment to TheWrap on Lizza’s characterization of events.
Lizza then claimed, after the story came out, that Nuzzi, Adler and Dornic tried to plant a series of reports to damage Lizza’s reputation. The efforts culminated in an attempt, Politico’s then-chief spokesperson Brad Dayspring told Lizza, to plant a story in the New York Times that suggested that Lizza “engineered” Nuzzi’s downfall and leaked the story to New York magazine and Darcy.
“I asked Brad to call Rachel and tell her to cease and desist unless she and CAA wanted to face a defamation lawsuit,” Lizza wrote.
Dayspring did not respond to an immediate request for comment. The Times did not run a story with the claim, and a source familiar with the matter told TheWrap that no story based on that claim was in the works.
Nuzzi has previously said Lizza’s allegations amounted to a mixture of “obsessive and violating fan fiction-slash-revenge porn” intended to “harass, humiliate, and harm” her that “would never meet standards for publication at any legitimate outlet.” Lizza has defended his series by saying that “telling the truth is not harassment.”
