In her first direct response to Ryan Lizza’s multi-part series recounting his experience of Olivia Nuzzi’s affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Nuzzi said his posts read as “obsessive and violating fan fiction-slash-revenge porn” meant to “harass, humiliate, and harm” her.
Nuzzi, 32, provided her thoughts on the series, Lizza, Kennedy and other topics in a Q&A with readers of Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me newsletter, which published the exchanges on Tuesday. The remarks mark some of her first public responses since a New York Times interview marked the start of her promotional efforts for her book “American Canto,” also out Tuesday, and launched a new wave of criticism about her relationship with Kennedy, her professional return as Vanity Fair’s West Coast editor and her allegedly repeated violations of journalistic ethical standards.
Vanity Fair is currently reviewing its relationship with Nuzzi. Nuzzi and Lizza, 51, were engaged but separated shortly before her relationship with Kennedy, 71, became public.
A reader asked Nuzzi about Lizza’s claim last week that, when she allegedly dispatched illustrator Isabelle Brourman to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to secretly record the former-turned-future president for her September 2024 profile of him, Brourman returned fixatated on something “explosive” Trump said about the July 2024 attempt on his life that, “if she were correct, would shatter our understanding of recent history.”
“He alleges you know certain things about the attempt on Trump’s life that would alter our current understanding of the event—is this true, and if so, what do you know?” the reader wrote.
“The allegations, made by a man I met when I was 19 years old, are another attempt to harass, humiliate, and harm me until I am as destroyed as he seems to be. It is abuse that I am all too familiar with now relocated to the public square and dressed up as some sort of noble crusade,” Nuzzi responded. “To that point: If he possessed any explosive information in the public interest, the only responsible way to handle that information would be to quietly pass it off to an outlet free of his conflicts; there is no glory in that, though, and no subscribers. This obsessive and violating fan fiction-slash-revenge porn he has written would never meet standards for publication at any legitimate outlet.”
After New York magazine suspended Nuzzi in September 2024 pending an investigation into the relationship with Kennedy, she filed a protective order against Lizza over allegations of hacking and harassment. Lizza denied the claims, and Nuzzi withdrew the order later that year.
Lizza told TheWrap on Tuesday that “telling the truth is not harassment” in response to Nuzzi‘s Tuesday comments. He told Sundberg the question was “not an accurate recounting of what I reported.” A spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department, which Kennedy oversees, did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
Lizza revealed on Monday that he “assumed” the context of what Brourman overheard likely centered around whether Trump was hit by a bullet, a bullet fragment or a shard of glass that day, but he said the only people who could answer what Trump said on the alleged — and allegedly deleted — tape were Brourman, Nuzzi and Kennedy.
Nuzzi also addressed various elements of her current life, her perspectives on Lizza and Kennedy and the allegations of journalistic ethics violations surrounding her conduct.
One reader asked if Nuzzi would ever return to political reporting and, if so, how she would work to “toe the ethical line” in such a role.
“No, but in any event, I fell in love with someone, the wrong someone, in the wrong circumstances, and the circumstances were made worse through my decisions, and I have clarity about my error and the errors in judgment that led to my error,” she responded.
Another reader asked Nuzzi how she has untangled elements of hate and misogyny she’s encountered from the questions of ethical violations and, with that, if she saw the two facets of her saga as linked. Nuzzi said the shock of it all came from seeing Lizza publicize the story in what she called “abuse and harassment,” but that she didn’t mind the discussion surrounding her ethical violations.
“I told the truth in this book in a way that doesn’t do me any favors but that I knew was important,” she wrote. “I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time with a book that was any kind of effort to spin on my own behalf. There existed no good set of facts. I made a mistake.”
When another asked whether she thought Kennedy, who has publicly denied a relationship with Nuzzi, was doing a “good job” in his cabinet role, she was curt.
“No.”
