New York Magazine’s star political reporter Olivia Nuzzi has been suspended over allegations that she had an affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom she met when she profiled him for the publication last year.
When news broke overnight about the 31-year-old reporter and frequent CNN guest’s affair with former presidential candidate Kennedy, 70, Internet users were shocked… into a frenzy, and the correspondent’s name quickly became a trending topic on X.
“The nature of some communications between me and a former reporter became personal,” Nuzzi admitted in a statement to DailyMail.com, also claiming the relationship was never physical.
But despite the recent coverage of Nuzzi, this is not the first time the political journalist, who earned a reputation as a wunderkind for her early career start, has been in the spotlight.
So who is Olivia Nuzzi?
New York Magazine’s star political reporter Olivia Nuzzi has been suspended amid allegations that she had an affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza, to whom she got engaged in 2022, attend the CBS News White House Correspondents’ After Party Dinner on April 29, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Nuzzi reportedly met RFK Jr. last year after interviewing him for an article in New York magazine.
The journalist grew up in New Jersey and attended Fordham University.
She began her writing career as a precocious teenager in 2011, when she began a monthly political column for the local New Jersey publication, triCityNews.
While a student at Fordham in 2013, Nuzzi, then 20, volunteered as an intern for former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s doomed, sex-scandal-plagued New York City mayoral campaign.
Soon after, she wrote a series of columns that read like exposés about her experience with the Brooklyn politician who was forced out of office in 2011 over a sexting scandal while he was married to Huma Abedin, an aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was pregnant.
As a result, she gained instant internet fame after Weiner’s communications director, Barbara Morgan, attacked the young reporter in an interview with Talking Points Memo, using several slurs to describe Nuzzi.
“Barbara Morgan started ranting and calling me a ‘bitch’, which I’d never heard before, a ‘fucking idiot’ and a ‘little idiot’ who ‘stunk’ at my job,” she later recalled of a call from a TPM reporter who asked for her comment.
Although Morgan apologized to the then-student reporter, stating that she believed the conversation was off the record, Nuzzi immortalized the political aide’s words as her Twitter bio: “Slut, tit and dick.”
In 2014, while still an undergraduate, she was hired by The Daily Beast, where she covered the political rise of Donald Trump. She would leave Fordham to work full-time for the Daily Beast.
Finally, Politico named Nuzzi a “rising media star” for her coverage of the presidential election.
In a 2015 post that has now come back to haunt her, Nuzzi tweeted a tirade against Hollywood depictions of journalists who use their sexuality to get ahead.
Reporter Olivia Nuzzi arrives for the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, on April 29, 2023.
Nuzzi photographed with her partner Ryan Lizza
“Why does Hollywood think female journalists sleep with their sources?” She askedwith a link to an article about the media’s portrayal of women as “monsters of greedy ambition.”
In 2017, New York Magazine hired her to be its Washington correspondent, a role that earned her a spot on Forbes’ 2018 “30 Under 30” list at just 24 years old.
And in 2019, Nuzzi won a NEXT Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors.
But Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has meanwhile considered taking legal action against the journalist after she entered his office without permission in 2018.
Nuzzi had told the Columbia Journalism Review that he briefly entered Lewandowski’s home in an attempt to interview him for an article about former White House staffer Hope Hicks.
“I headed there from the White House. I tried to knock on the basement door, but the gate wasn’t open,” Nuzzi told the Columbia Journalism Review.
“I walked up the stairs to the front door and knocked for about ten minutes. I knocked and knocked, but no one answered.”
“But after a while, I just touched the doorknob and the door opened. I walked in and I was in the house, alone,” she continued. “So I took this photo of the quote on a wall. I looked around, but I didn’t go all the way into the house.”
Nuzzi then texted her boyfriend, who warned her that it was “probably not legal” for her to enter Lewandowski’s residence without permission.
But New York Magazine told Fox News that it stood by the journalist’s actions.
In fact, later that year, the journalist was personally invited to the Oval Office by then-President Donald Trump for an exclusive interview for New York.
In 2022, Nuzzi got engaged to Politico’s chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza, 50, announcing their engagement on Instagram with a series of videos showing off a massive solitaire-cut engagement ring on her ring finger.
Lizza has two children from his previous marriage to Dr Christine Gillespie. He was previously a staff writer for The New Yorker but was fired in 2017 amid a #MeToo scandal after being accused of “inappropriate sexual conduct”.
RFK Jr. is married to actress Cheryl Hines (pictured)
Cheryl Hines and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Los Angeles premiere of the final season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” held at the DGA Theater Complex on January 30, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
The couple were set to publish a joint book on the 2020 election, but it has since stalled.
Page Six had reported that they were having a hard time getting the expected policy scoops and that the Biden team in particular was wary of Nuzzi.
However, the couple has reportedly split, the New York Post reported in recent weeks.
Nuzzi is believed to have met RFK Jr., a father of six, on a hiking trip last year as part of a profile she wrote for New York magazine.
In his profile, Nuzzi described how he met with the former presidential candidate at the $7 million California home he shares with his wife.
He painted a portrait of RFK Jr. as an anti-establishment candidate, “who would revolutionize presidential elections.”
“Fear – and denial – is what Kennedy seems to inspire among the staid Washington establishment that supports the sitting president and the underworld establishment that opposes the establishment and supports the former president,” he wrote.
He referred to the conflict in RFK Jr.’s marriage over his appearance on Steve Bannon’s show and those of other right-wing personalities.
“Bannon was just the beginning. Poor Cheryl,” Nuzzi wrote.
At the time the article was published, RFK Jr. was running as an independent candidate, but has since dropped out and endorsed Trump.
Nuzzi’s final article, in which he described the examination of Trump’s ear after the attempted assassination of Butler, was published by the magazine on September 9.
This comes amid news that RFK Jr. is under federal investigation after he allegedly cut the head off a dead whale and took it home two decades ago.
RFK Jr. has been married to his third wife, Cheryl Hines, since 2014. In addition to his six children and two grandchildren, he is a stepfather to his daughter from a previous relationship.
