Olivia Nuzzi, the political journalist who had a personal relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while covering the 2024 campaign, has accused her ex-fiancé of masterminding a blackmail and harassment campaign against her, according to CNN.
Nuzzi’s claims against Ryan Lizza, himself a star political reporter, were made in a court filing and before a judge in Washington, D.C. this week, the network reported Tuesday.
The alleged plot against Nuzzi kicked off in July, as Lizza allegedly began scheming “to blackmail her back into a relationship with him and punish her when she wouldn’t acquiesce,” CNN reported.
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By the next month, Nuzzi reportedly said in the filing, Lizza had “explicitly threatened to make public personal information about me to destroy my life, career, and reputation—a threat he has since carried out.”
Nuzzi filed for a civil protection order against Lizza, which a D.C. superior court magistrate judge granted at a Tuesday hearing. Another hearing is scheduled for Oct. 15, when the order expires.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks during a campaign event for former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Walker, Michigan, on September 27, 2024.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty ImagesTo do so, Lizza hacked into her personal electronic devices, stole one of them, and then began quietly airing her dirty laundry around town, looking for a media outlet to pick his anonymous tip up, Nuzzi alleged.
She referred to the substance of his blackmail material only as “the matter,” according to CNN. Kennedy is not named in her filing.
Nuzzi said that some of the dirt Lizza allegedly had on her had been “doctored” to make her look worse. She also claimed that Lizza may have impersonated “an anonymous campaign operative” as he shopped the information around.
Lizza denied all of Nuzzi’s allegations in a statement.
“I am saddened that my ex-fiancé would resort to making a series of false accusations against me as a way to divert attention from her own personal and professional failings,” he told the Daily Beast. “I emphatically deny these allegations and I will defend myself against them vigorously and successfully.”
Several hours later, Semafor journalist Maxwell Tani reported on X that Lizza and Politico had “mutually agreed” that he would take a leave of absence while an investigation was conducted following Nuzzi’s filing.
The alleged blackmail threat would have taken place roughly a month before New York magazine announced that Nuzzi had been placed on leave after disclosing to its editors that she had engaged in a relationship “with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign.”
Media journalist Oliver Darcy identified the subject as Kennedy in his Status newsletter the same evening New York’s statement was posted online.
The magazine said that it had reviewed her 2024 work and found “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias,” but had engaged an unnamed independent third party to more thoroughly comb through her stories.
Nuzzi released a statement on the matter later that night, saying that “some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal” earlier this year.
“During that time, I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source,” she said.
“The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”
The next day, Lizza, who serves as Politico’s chief Washington correspondent, said in an edition of the Playbook newsletter he co-authors that “because of my connection to this story through my ex-fiancé, my editors and I have agreed that I won’t be involved in any coverage of Kennedy in Playbook or elsewhere at Politico.”
On the night the news broke, Kennedy claimed through a spokesperson that he had only met Nuzzi “once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece.”
Pushed by anchor Martha MacCallum to elaborate in an appearance on Fox News last week, Kennedy said he “never” commented on “those kind of stories.
“If you want to talk about health,” he went on, “or how to end the war in Ukraine or how to end inflation and—or how to end the censorship and surveillance regime, I’m happy to talk about those.”
Vanity Fair reported over the weekend that Lizza had broken off his engagement with Nuzzi just before the Democratic National Convention in August, “upon learning about her relationship with Kennedy.”
When exactly he learned of the relationship—which reportedly only involved digital communication and never became physical—was not made clear in the report.
After the discovery, however, Lizza and Kennedy had an “at times heated” phone conversation, sources told Vanity Fair. Lizza declined to comment to the magazine.
