The former New York Magazine journalist who left her job after sharing an intimate texting relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has now been accused by her former fiancé of having a “physical” affair with another prominent politician: former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
Olivia Nuzzi, now 32, had her name plastered in headlines across the globe in September 2024, when allegations first surfaced that she had been having a “love” affair with 71-year-old RFK Jr.—an involvement that is said to have begun soon after she profiled him for a piece in New York Magazine.
After that news broke, Nuzzi was placed on leave from her job—while her ex-fiancé, Ryan Lizza, publicly announced that their engagement was over.
RFK Jr.’s wife, Cheryl Hines, recently detailed her own reaction to the scandal in her newly published book, “Unscripted,” in which she claims that the affair actually strengthened her marriage.
Now, Lizza, 51, who was in a relationship with Nuzzi for around 10 years, has sensationally claimed that his ex-partner also had a romance with Sanford, 65, a one-time presidential hopeful. Lizza says he learned about that relationship in March 2020.
Lizza’s claims were aired in a personal essay published on his website, Telos News, simply titled, “Part 1: How I Found Out,” detailing how he came across a collection of love notes that he says were written by Nuzzi to Sanford, inside the Georgetown townhouse they were sharing at the time.
According to Lizza, Nuzzi had “just returned from a reporting trip” and had left her backpack “tossed beside our bed” with its “contents scattered on the floor,” including several notes written on Kimpton Hotel stationary.
“I stooped to retrieve the papers from the floor and noticed her handwriting on the hotel stationery, which I stacked on her desk,” he said, before jibing: “By this point, I was used to cleaning up Olivia’s messes.”
He recalled how “something on the Kimpton stationary caught [his] eye” and prompted him to take a closer look at what was written on the paper: a romantic declaration by Nuzzi, which he quickly realized was not meant for him, largely because of a reference to a home that he knew was not the one they shared.
“‘If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house,’ Olivia had written, ‘I would still thirst for you,'” Lizza wrote of what he found on the note.
“Unfortunately, the lack of a water tower on our Georgetown home’s roof ruled me out as the note’s intended recipient,” he added.
The father of two, who was previously married to Christina Gillespie, with whom he shares two kids, said he continued flipping through the notes and found another “unfinished love letter,” which he claims contained evidence of a “physical relationship” between Nuzzi and Sanford.
“My heart stopped when I realized who he was,” Lizza wrote. “He was a famous politician, 32 years older than Olivia, and well-known for a sex scandal. But more importantly, he was a presidential candidate, a source, and the subject of Olivia’s recent profile for New York [Magazine].”
He said he quickly began assessing the potential fallout of the relationship being discovered, admitting that he was “devastated” by her “betrayal,” but also terrified about the ramifications that the discovery of the romance might have on his children.
“She had an affair with someone who would provide the maximum level of humiliation and personal and professional ruin, perhaps for both of us,” he went on.
Lizza noted that the bitter sting of his discovery was made all the more painful by the fact that Nuzzi had been “pressuring” him to propose, something that he says he was reluctant to do, noting that their decision to move in together in a “three-story townhouse in Georgetown” was meant to serve as a “test run” for what a marriage might look like.
He recalled how the move into the property marked a new chapter for both of them—having come at the end of a “dark” period during which they’d weathered the death of Nuzzi’s father, Lizza’s divorce from Gillespie, his firing from The New Yorker, and the “untangling” of Nuzzi’s “unusual relationship” with former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann.
According to Lizza, Nuzzi had been living with Olbermann in New York City, having moved in with him after she “fled her unhappy home in suburban New Jersey.”
He alleged that Olbermann “paid for her to attend college, outfitted her in Tom Ford and Hervé Léger dresses and some $15,000 worth of Cartier jewelry,” before later paying to rent her an apartment in the West Village.
Lizza said he worked with Nuzzi to help her plan her “escape” from that entanglement, before she returned the favor by assisting him in navigating his exit from The New Yorker.
“Her enemies became my enemies and vice versa,” he noted.
When Lizza claims to have discovered the evidence of Nuzzi’s romance with Sanford, the two of them were not only living together in Georgetown, but also working on a new book about the presidential campaign, a project that he believed would quickly be killed if word of her affair got out.
As it turns out, Nuzzi has continued to pursue that deal on her own—albeit in a very different format, announcing at the end of October that she would be releasing her own book, “American Canto,” in which she opens up about her relationship with a man she refers to only as the “politician,” but whom many believe to be RFK Jr.
Lizza said it was Nuzzi’s decision to publish a book about her relationship with Kennedy that prompted him to share his side of the story, insisting that “silence was [his] preference” over a public airing of their dirty laundry.
“Unfortunately, silence no longer seems advisable or even possible,” he stated, citing his ex’s decision to publish an excerpt of her book in Vanity Fair and take part in a profile piece with The New York Times ahead of the tome’s Dec. 2 publication.
Nuzzi has not yet addressed Lizza’s latest claims—and it remains to be seen when, or if, he will publish the second part to what appears to have been a planned series of essays.
The journalist has, however, shared a glimpse into her own version of events with regard to her relationship with Kennedy, alleging to The New York Times that Kennedy had repeatedly professed his love to her and claiming that she only returned that sentiment after he had said it first.
She further alleged that RFK Jr. had expressed his desire to have a baby with her.
Of the moment when the news of their affair broke, Nuzzi said that RFK Jr. suggested they spin it as nothing more than a physical dalliance, telling her: “If it’s just sex, I can survive it.”
Meanwhile Hines admitted in her own book that the reports about her husband’s involvement with Nuzzi were very nearly her breaking point—explaining that she “hit a wall” with regards to the rumors surrounding her marriage.
“Of course, I hated all of it,” she said. “The swirl of headlines, rumors, and insinuations was upsetting and overwhelming. I had hit a wall.”
The comedian was traveling in Europe with her daughters when the news initially broke and admitted that her first reaction was “a wave of indifference,” one that was caused by a seemingly endless barrage of negative press coverage about her relationship.
“I didn’t care what had happened, who said what, what was real, what wasn’t real, who was involved or why they were involved,” she shared. “I was fine with letting them all continue with the drama and the politics without me.
“It felt like a game people were playing and I wasn’t interested in participating. It was the end of the line for me.”
Eager to process the news alone, Hines extended her trip so she could “breakdown” without her daughters there, giving her a chance to figure out her own feelings before she spoke to Kennedy about it.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen when I returned home and saw Bobby again, but he was eager to talk to me,” she revealed.
When she flew back to the U.S., her husband was waiting to pick her up at the airport—and the pair didn’t even wait to return home before discussing the Nuzzi scandal, instead parking up and carrying out that emotional conversation in their car.
“We probably talked for an hour while the security team watched over the car,” she recalled. “I felt so distant from him. It seemed like the only threads that were connecting me to him were directly tied to all of our kids.”
It was, she said, her “adoration” and “respect” of her children that motivated her to “listen to what Bobby had to say” over the following days, during which they “locked [themselves] in a room and laid it all on the table.”
Ultimately, that no-holds-barred conversation spread to other pain points on both sides, with Hines explaining: “We talked about all of the painful times we’d been through in the last few years and what we meant to each other. We analyzed how we had become disconnected and what had kept us together.
“We went through all of the details about the latest story—what was true and what wasn’t.
“Through those soul-searching days, we tightened our ties that bind.”