‘I’m Afraid Bobby Will Kill Me’: Olivia Nuzzi’s Ex-Fiance Claims She Feared for Her Life

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Journalist Ryan Lizza dropped more bombshell claims about his ex-fiance Olivia Nuzzi and her relationship with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including that she feared Kennedy would “kill” her.

In a Saturday post to Substack, part two of a series, Lizza detailed discovering an affair between Nuzzi and former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (R) in 2020, as well as the Kennedy relationship four years later.

Nuzzi has been making headlines over her new book American Canto, which details her relationship with Kennedy while she covered his presidential campaign for New York magazine. Nuzzi claimed the relationship never got physical, but she should have disclosed it over a potential conflict of interest. Kennedy has meanwhile denied any romantic or sexual relationship with Nuzzi. The revelation about Nuzzi and Kennedy led to her being let go from New York magazine and her engagement to Lizza to end.

In Lizza’s Substack post, Lizza described finding romantic correspondences between Kennedy and Nuzzi.

“I wish I hadn’t been put in this position, that I didn’t have to write about any of this, that I didn’t have to subject myself or my loved ones to embarrassment and further loss of privacy. But Olivia has reignited a campaign of misinformation about what really happened, and Bobby, who has denied everything, is one of the most consequential policymakers in America. Unfortunately, I’m the only other person who knows everything,” he wrote.

According to Lizza, he and Nuzzi had decided to stay together after he discovered she’d slept with Sanford. Lizza wrote that he suspected more than just one physical encounter between Nuzzi and Sanford and when she encouraged him to go through her laptop and phone, he discovered a fake news story she’d written up about herself.

Lizza wrote:

Olivia had written a tabloid-style news story about how “sources in Washington, D.C. and Charleston have been buzzing recently about an unexpected romance: Mark Sanford and Olivia Nuzzi,” who was described as “one of the most famous political reporters in America,” a “blonde beauty” who “gained critical acclaim as a skilled profile writer, gaining access to the powerful and the mysterious and turning it into pure journalistic gold.”

Olivia told me she wrote the fake article as an exercise to think through what might be the worst that could be said publicly if the affair became known, though that didn’t really make sense to me given the piece’s tone. Her fantasizing about what it would be like when her secret relationship with a notorious politician finally became public would repeat itself during her affair with Bobby.

When the relationship with Kennedy was discovered, Lizza claimed that Nuzzi denied there was a physical relationship. Lizza accused Nuzzi of having a “near-total obsession with Bobby.”

Lizza wrote that when he broke off their engagement, he informed Nuzzi that he would tell people the truth if they asked about her and Kennedy.

“She seemed paralyzed with fear, and I frankly didn’t quite understand why,” he wrote.

The journalist claimed Kennedy had demanded “total submission” and “discipline” and Nuzzi revealed weeks later why she was afraid of Lizza telling the truth.

“If anyone ever finds out,” Lizza recalled his ex-fiance telling him. “I’m afraid Bobby will kill me.”

Read the full Substack post here.