Who is Olivia Nuzzi? New York magazine’s star Washington correspondent caught up in alleged ‘sexting’ scandal with RFK Jr.

Oliver Nuzzi, star political reporter at New York Magazine, has been suspended following allegations that she had an affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom she met while writing a profile of him for the publication last year.

The magazine said in a statement that the Washington correspondent had “admitted” to its editors that she had “had a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while covering the campaign,” in a “violation” of its “conflict of interest and disclosure standards,” the publication said.

Meanwhile, The New York Post reported that the couple were reportedly sexting when she was engaged and he was married.

Both deny that anything physical happened. A Kennedy adviser even said it was “emotional and digital.”

Nuzzi admitted in a statement to DailyMail.com that “the nature of the communications between me and a former reporter became personal.” He also claimed the relationship was never physical.

Amid news of the reporter’s affair with former presidential candidate Kennedy, internet users have been left in disarray in a frenzy, with the correspondent’s name tending towards X. But despite the recent reporting on Nuzzi, this is not the first time the political journalist has been in the spotlight.

So, who is Olivia Nuzzi?

The 31-year-old American political reporter grew up in New Jersey and attended Fordham University.

She began her writing career as a teenager, when she started a monthly political column for the publication triCityNews.

While still a student at Fordham, Nuzzi volunteered as a 20-year-old intern for Anthony Weiner’s failed campaign for mayor of New York City. She later wrote a series of columns about her experiences.

This catapulted her to internet fame overnight after Weiner’s communications director Barbara Morgan slammed the reporter in an interview with Talking Points Memo, describing Nuzzi in several offensive ways.

While Morgan apologized to the young reporter and said she felt the conversation had not been discussed on the record, Nuzzi immortalized the political consultant’s words in her Twitter bio: “Slut, prick and asshole.”

In 2014, while still in college, she was hired by The Daily Beast, where she covered the political rise of Donald Trump.

Politico called her a “media standout” for her coverage of the presidential election.

In 2015, Nuzzi posted a tweet strongly protesting the way Hollywood portrayed journalists as using their sexuality to get ahead.

“Why does Hollywood think female reporters sleep with their sources?” she asked, along with an article about the way women in the media are portrayed as “slutty, ambitious monsters.” The long-ago tweet is now coming back to haunt her, as allegations surface that she has a personal relationship with RFK Jr.

In 2017, she was hired by New York Magazine as a Washington correspondent, a role that earned her a spot on Forbes’ 2018 “30 under 30” list, at just 24 years old. In 2019, she won a NEXT award from the American Society of Magazine Editors.

In 2018, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski considered taking legal action against the journalist after she entered his office without permission.

Nuzzi told the Columbia Journalism Review that she briefly entered Lewandowski’s home to interview him for an article about former White House employee Hope Hicks.

“I went 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.

“Then I walked up the stairs to the front door and I knocked, for about 10 minutes. And I knocked, knocked, no one answered.”

“But after a while I touched the doorknob and the door opened. I walked in and I’m in the house, alone,” she continued. “So I took this picture of the quote on a wall. I peeked around, but I didn’t walk all the way into the house.”

Nuzzi then texted her boyfriend, telling him it was “probably not legal” for her to enter Lewandowski’s home without permission.

But New York Magazine told Fox News they supported the reporter’s actions.

In 2018, the reporter was personally invited to the Oval Office by then-President Donald Trump for an exclusive interview.

In 2022, Nuzzi got engaged to Ryan Lizza, 50, Politico’s chief Washington correspondent. She announced her engagement on Instagram with a series of videos showing off a huge, solitaire cut sparkler 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 behavior.”

The couple were supposed to publish a book together about the 2020 elections, but that has not yet been successful.

According to Page Six, it was difficult to come up with the expected political scoops. Biden’s team in particular was wary of Nuzzi.

However, the couple is said to have already ended their relationship. The New York Post reports that this only happened in recent weeks.

Nuzzi is said to have met RFK Jr., a father of six, for a hiking trip last year as part of a profile she wrote for New York magazine.

In her profile, Nuzzi describes meeting the former presidential candidate at the $7 million California home he shares with his wife.

She painted a picture of RFK Jr. as an anti-establishment candidate who would “turn the presidential election upside down.”

“Fear and denial seem to be the feelings Kennedy arouses among the staunch Washington elite who support the sitting president and among the anti-establishment mob who support the former president,” she wrote.

She was talking about the conflict in RFK Jr.’s marriage, which arose because of his appearance on the show with Steve Bannon and other right-wing personalities.

“Bannon was just the beginning. Poor Cheryl,” Nuzzi wrote.

At the time the piece was published, RFK Jr. was running as an independent candidate. He has since withdrawn and endorsed Trump.

Nuzzi’s final article, in which she described how she examined 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 for allegedly cutting off the head of a dead whale and taking it home with him twenty years 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 the stepfather of her daughter from a previous relationship.