Ryan Lizza Accuses Olivia Nuzzi of Conspiring With RFK Jr. to Kill Damaging Stories — Including the Infamous Bear Cub Carcass

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

Ryan Lizza published the third scathing installment of his series eviscerating Olivia Nuzzi Wednesday, this time accusing his former fiancée of additional breaches of journalistic ethics by helping “catch and kill” damaging stories about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Nuzzi’s relationship with Kennedy — reportedly only over the phone and never physically consummated — led to her departure from New York magazine. She’s been widely criticized for failing to disclose the relationship to her editors despite the conflict of interest related to her writing a profile on Kennedy and continuing to cover the other candidates in the race. More recent revelations have reportedly led to her current employer, Vanity Fair, reviewing her conduct, with a spokesperson for the magazine telling The New York Times, “We were taken by surprise, and we are looking at all the facts.”

Building on his previous posts in which Lizza spilled the tea about Nuzzi’s past relationship with Keith Olbermann, revealed embarrassing details of Nuzzi’s correspondence with Kennedy, and accused her of having an affair with yet another former GOP presidential candidate, Mark Sanford, the latest missive digs into accusations that Nuzzi acted more like an aggressive public relations flak than a journalist in her efforts to shield Kennedy from negative press.

“[W]hat you have been reading about here is not really a scandal about sex,” wrote Lizza, “but a scandal about journalistic ethics.”

Included in the stories Nuzzi attempted to help Kennedy with were the infamous tale of a bear cub carcass he left in Central Park. He describes his then-fiancée as “obsessed” with getting an advance copy of a pending New Yorker story about the bear.

Lizza initially assumed Nuzzi’s focus on the bear article was professional jealousy another reporter had gotten the scoop, but it turned out that she already knew about it, having learned about it from “a confidential source.”

“But instead of writing it herself and owning what would become one of the most infamous stories of 2024, or handing it off to a colleague at New York, Olivia outed the source to Bobby and told him everything she had learned,” wrote Lizza. “Together they plotted ways to kill it, or, at the very least, get ahead of it.”

Lizza added that Nuzzi told him later that she “did this regularly” throughout the 2024 election, “canvassing sources who trusted her, obtaining their opposition research on Bobby, and then feeding it directly to [Kennedy],” outing her sources.

She also advised Kennedy on debate prep and helped him pick out a suit, Lizza wrote, gave him “detailed media strategy advice,” “helped him pursue Secret Service protection,” and used a work assignment to “gather intelligence that would help Bobby negotiate a Trump endorsement.” Nuzzi was “publicly posing as a hard-nosed reporter,” he wrote, but “had essentially become a private political operative for Bobby Kennedy.”

“In the media business, there are few journalistic crimes as serious as betraying a confidential source,” Lizza continued, accusing Nuzzi of acting as Kenney’s “eyes and ears” within his campaign, “ferreting out leakers and other disloyal staffers”:

One day, a young campaign aide approached Olivia with an inside account of the chaotic process that led Bobby to select Nicole Shanahan as his running mate. Like the bear story, it was journalistic gold for anyone covering the Kennedy campaign. But instead of pursuing the story, Olivia convinced the staffer to remain loyal to Bobby—and then informed the candidate of everything. She had successfully caught and killed an embarrassing tell-all from a campaign whistleblower whose identity she revealed to the candidate.

As for Nuzzi’s explosive exposé on then-President Joe Biden that accused him and his advisers of concealing his mental decline, published on July 4, 2024, Lizza writes that while she was “savaging him as a drooling invalid,” she was simultaneously working on a “strategy memo to help Bobby revive his dying campaign.”

That Biden article also included “an anecdote that I knew had been told to her off the record,” Lizza wrote, telling how he had asked her about it and she replied, “I just sort of Michael Wolffed it.”

Lizza wrapped the post with a hint at more allegations of journalistic ethical breaches to come, accusing Nuzzi of secretly recording President Donald Trump at his home in Mar-a-Lago:

Olivia had a brilliant plan to help secure Trump’s cooperation with her article. She convinced New York magazine to commission artist Isabelle Brourman to draw a portrait of Trump to accompany the piece. Trump had taken a liking to Izzy when she worked as a sketch artist during his Manhattan trial, and Olivia figured he would enjoy having her around him.

She was right. But Olivia was excluded from Izzy’s key session with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and so Olivia adjusted the plan. She sent Izzy inside Trump’s Palm Beach compound with a recorder in her bag, which rolled as Izzy drew Trump, who was taking campaign meetings with the likes of Matt Gaetz, Susie Wiles, and others. With any luck, Olivia would capture some great material for her piece and some intel for Bobby as he negotiated the endorsement.

According to Olivia, when Izzy left the session, Izzy was hung up on something she believed Trump might have said about Butler, Pennsylvania—something explosive that, if she were correct, would shatter our understanding of recent history.

If true, Florida is a two-party consent state, and a secret recording may have involved a crime.

Mediaite reached out to Nuzzi for comment but did not receive a response.

This article has been updated to correct quotes from Lizza’s Substack post and to add additional content.

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