Journalist Ryan Lizza claimed on Wednesday that reporter and ex-fianceé Olivia Nuzzi fueled her affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year by aiding his floundering 2024 campaign for president, including feeding him advance information about potentially harmful stories and helping him navigate his eventual endorsement of Donald Trump.
In part three of his tell-all series on his relationship and break-up with Nuzzi, Lizza wrote that Nuzzi repeatedly interrogated her journalistic sources on information that would aid Kennedy in his pursuit of the presidency — and kill potentially damaging stories that could imperil his quest, such as a New Yorker bombshell about Kennedy dumping a bear carcass in New York‘s Central Park.
She fed the information back to him, Lizza claimed, even if it meant burning sources who trusted her in confidence.
“Olivia had essentially become a private political operative for Bobby Kennedy, while publicly posing as a hard-nosed reporter,” he wrote. “What you have been reading about here is not really a scandal about sex, but a scandal about journalistic ethics.”
Such efforts allegedly extended to profiles she wrote of Trump and Biden for New York magazine, her journalistic home from 2017 to 2024.
During the reporting for her September 2024 profile of Trump, Nuzzi allegedly snuck a recorder in artist Isabelle Brourman’s bag as Brourman went to sketch Trump at Mar-a-Lago in order to pick up conversations the candidate had with associates for the story, including those with Matt Gaetz, Susie Wiles and others, Lizza claimed.
“With any luck, Olivia would capture some great material for her piece and some intel for Bobby as he negotiated the endorsement,” he wrote. “According to Olivia, when [Brourman] left the session, [she] was hung up on something she believed Trump might have said about Butler, Pennsylvania—something explosive that, if she were correct, would shatter our understanding of recent history.”
Lizza ended with that dramatic cliffhanger, which will presumably be covered in the next installment.
In a statement to TheWrap, Nuzzi’s attorney Ari Wilkenfeld said of the latest allegations, “This is another example of why Ms. Nuzzi sought the intervention of the DC Superior Court in 2024 amid a harassment campaign that is still ongoing and has now lasted more than 16 months; that legal process was then weaponized and used to escalate the harassment against her and to humiliate her. Ms. Nuzzi will not dignify efforts to impugn her character with any further response.”
Kennedy endorsed Trump in August 2024, a month after a gunman tried to assassinate the 45th and now 47th president at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. After winning the election, Trump tapped Kennedy to the powerful position of Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has previously denied having an inappropriate relationship with Nuzzi.
Spokespeople for Kennedy and the White House did not respond to immediate requests for comment. Brourman did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
The claims shine a greater light on Nuzzi’s alleged journalistic malpractice during her six-year tenure as New York’s Washington correspondent, which ended last year after her “personal” relationship with Kennedy was revealed. Nuzzi, whose relationship with Lizza also ended last year, has since returned with a book reflecting on the scandal, “American Canto,” which was excerpted in Vanity Fair, where she now serves as West Coast editor.
Since the launch of Nuzzi’s promotional efforts for her book, Lizza has used his Substack newsletter, Telos News, to highlight Nuzzi’s alleged personal and professional indiscretions. His first installment claimed that Nuzzi also had an affair in 2020 with former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, another reporting subject who ran for president, while his second part detailed more of her personal relationships with Kennedy and Sanford. (Sanford has not commented on the alleged relationship, and Lizza’s claims have not been substantiated.)
Vanity Fair said last week it was reviewing its ties to Nuzzi in light of Lizza’s comments, and it did respond to an immediate request Wednesday for comment on status of its review. New York magazine also did not respond to an immediate request for comment on Nuzzi’s alleged actions last year while working at the publication.
Lizza reportedly plans to publish up to eight parts, so this saga is unlikely to fade anytime soon.