New court filings shed some light on how Ryan Lizza sees the end of his relationship with his ex-fiancĂŠe Olivia Nuzzi, the New York magazine reporter who is currently on leave due to her alleged affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Previously, Olivia Nuzzi accused Lizza, who is also a political journalist, of blackmailing her. The 31-year-old Nuzzi alleged that Lizza, 50, âexplicitly threatened to make public personal information about [her] to destroy [her] life, career, and reputation â a threat he has since carried out,” per Page Six.
In a court filing, Olivia Nuzzi also accused Lizza of harassing her in attempt to get her to stay in a relationship with him. Lizza’s court filings contradict this narrative. In a court filing on October 14, 2024, obtained by the Daily Beast, Lizza alleged that Nuzzi did not want to end their relationship. He denied the allegations of blackmail, and claimed that, in August, Nuzzi admitted to having an affair with RFK Jr., who is 70 years old and married.
Nuzzi described her alleged relationship with RFK Jr. as “stupid,” “psychotic” and “unhealthy,” her ex claimed in his court filing, per the Daily Beast.
âI discovered that Ms. Nuzzi had been cheating on me with a married man [RFK Jr.] for almost a year,” Lizza said in his filing. During “weeks of conversations,” Nuzzi explained how RFK Jr. “manipulated her,” Lizza alleged.
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Per the court filing, Lizza recalls Nuzzi confessing to an affair that was “toxic,” with “a huge power disparity between [Nuzzi and RFK Jr.]” Lizza went on to allege that Nuzzi told him about how RFK Jr. said he wanted to “possess,” “control,” and “impregnate” her.
Nuzzi previously filed a petition for a protective order and alleged that Lizza hacked “my devices for the purposes of stalking and surveilling me and to collect materials to deploy as blackmail to intimidate me back into a relationship and to inflict public ridicule and humiliation as well as professional damage as punishment when I would not return to the relationship.”
Meanwhile, Lizza claims that Nuzzi “resisted any effort to formally end our relationship and she repeatedly asked me for more time to consider our future.”
He has denied hacking Nuzzi’s devices as well, and says that he learned of Nuzzi’s affair through Nuzzi herself. “Almost everything I know about her affair comes directly from Ms. Nuzzi herself,” he said in his court filing, per the Daily Beast.
Lizza maintains that he was the one who wanted to end the relationship with Nuzzi. âIncluding on our last day together, I told Ms. Nuzzi that I would help her get away from the disturbing relationship with her paramour, but that I seriously doubted that it was possible for us to have a future together,â he wrote in the court filing, per CNN.
In September, Nuzzi said in a statement shared with CNN that “the nature of some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal.” The personal relationship “was never physical,” she said. A spokesperson for RFK Jr. told the news outlet: “Mr. Kennedy only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece.”
During a September 25 interview with Fox News host Martha MacCallum, RFK Jr. had the opportunity to respond to the allegations about his affair with Nuzzi.
“[The alleged relationship with Nuzzi] has gotten a lot of attention, so what do you say to your supporters who question your behavior and want to know whatâs going on?” MacCallum asked RFK Jr. at the time.
However, RFK Jr. quickly declined to comment. “I never comment on those kind of stories,” he said at the time. He tried to change the topic, saying, “If you want to talk about health or how to end the war in Ukraine or how to end inflation and or how to end the censorship and surveillance regime, I’m happy to talk about those [things].”
RFK Jr. has been married to actress Cheryl Hines since 2014.
