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

New York Magazine’s star political reporter OIivia Nuzzi has been placed on leave amid claims that she had an affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who she met when she did a profile on him for the publication last year. 

As news broke overnight about the 31-year-old reporter and frequent CNN guest’s fling with former presidential hopeful Kennedy, 70, internet users were sent into a frenzy, with the correspondent’s name quickly trending on X.

‘The nature of some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal’, Nuzzi admitted in a statement to DailyMail.com, and also claimed the relationship was never physical.

But despite recent coverage on Nuzzi, this is not the first time the political journalist, who earned a reputation as a wunderkind for her very early career start, has had the spotlight shone on her.

So, who is Olivia Nuzzi? 

Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza, who she got engaged to in 2022, attend the CBS News White House Correspondents’ Dinner After Party on April 29, 2023 in Washington, DC

Nuzzi reportedly met RFK Jr. last year after interviewing him for a piece in New York Magazine

The journalist grew up in New Jersey and attended Fordham University. 

She began her writing career as a precocious teenager in 2011 when she started a monthly political column for local New Jersey publication triCityNews.

While a student at Fordham in 2013, a then 20-year-old Nuzzi volunteered as an intern for sex-scandal plagued former congressman Anthony Weiner’s doomed New York City mayoral campaign.

Shortly after she wrote a series of columns that read like exposes on her experience.

As a result, she earned instant internet fame after Weiner communications director Barbara Morgan tore into the cub reporter in an interview with Talking Points Memo, using several slurs to describe Nuzzi. 

While Morgan apologised to the then still student-reporter, stating that she believed the conversation was off-the-record, Nuzzi immortalised the political aide’s words as her Twitter bio: ‘Slutbag, t*** and c***’. 

She was later hired by The Daily Beast in 2014 while still a college student, where she covered Donald Trump’s political rise. 

She was named a ‘breakout media star’ by Politico for her coverage on the presidential election. 

In 2015, Nuzzi posted a tweet where she railed against Hollywood depictions of journalists using their sexuality to get ahead. 

Reporter Olivia Nuzzi arrives for the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, April 29, 2023

Nuzzi pictured with partner Ryan Lizza

‘Why does Hollywood think female reporters sleep with their sources?’, she asked, along with an article about the portrayal of women in the media as ‘slutty ambition monsters’, with the long ago tweet coming back to haunt her amid claims of her personal relationship with RFK Jr.

By 2017, she was hired by New York Magazine to be its  Washington correspondent, a role that earned her a place in  Forbes’ 2018 ’30 under 30′ list aged just 24. In 2019 won a NEXT award by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

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

Nuzzi had told the Columbia Journalism Review that she briefly entered Lewandowski’s townhouse in an attempt to interview him for a piece about former White House employee Hope Hicks. 

‘I headed over 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 steps to the main door and knocked for, like, 10 minutes. And I’m knocking, knocking, nobody’s answering.’

‘But after a while, I just touched the door knob, and the door was open. I walked in and I’m in the house, by myself,’ she continued. ‘So I took this photo of the quote on a wall. I peered around but I didn’t walk fully into the house.’

Nuzzi then texted her boyfriend, who advised it ‘probably wasn’t legal’ that she entered Lewandowski’s residence without permission.  

But New York Magazine told Fox News that they stood by 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 became engaged to Politico’s chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza, 50, announcing her betrothal 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 doctor Christine Gillespie. He was formerly a writer for the New Yorker but was fired in 2017 amid a #MeToo scandal after he was accused of ‘improper sexual conduct’.

RFK Jr. is married to actress Cheryl Hines (pictured)

Cheryl Hines and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Los Angeles premiere of the final season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” held at the DGA Theater Complex on January 30, 2024 in Los Angeles, California

The couple were due to publish a book together about the 2020 election which has since stalled. 

Page Six had reported that they were struggling to come up with the anticipated political scoops, with Biden’s team in particular mistrustful of Nuzzi. 

However, the couple have allegedly called it quits, with the New York Post reporting this was in the last few weeks.

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

In her profile Nuzzi, described 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, ‘turning the presidential election upside down’.

‘Fear — and denial — is what Kennedy seems to inspire among the staid Washington Establishment supporting the incumbent president and the gangland anti-Establishment Establishment supporting the former president,’ she wrote.

She touched on conflict in RFK Jr.’s marriage over his appearance on Steve Bannon’s show and those of other right-wing personalities.

‘Bannon was only the beginning. Poor Cheryl,’ Nuzzi wrote.

At the time the piece was published, RFK Jr. was in the election race as an independent candidate, but has since dropped out and endorsed Trump.

Nuzzi’s last article, in which she described examining Trump’s ear following the Butler assassination attempt, was published by the magazine on September 9.

It comes amid the news that RFK Jr. is under federal investigation after he allegedly cut off the head of a dead whale and took it home two decades ago.

RFK Jr. has been married to third wife Cheryl Hines since 2014. As well as his six children and two grandchildren, he is a stepfather to her daughter from a previous relationship.