2 hours ago
2
Disgraced political reporter Olivia Nuzzi — who is set to release a tell-all book on her “sexting” affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — was accused by her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza Monday of sleeping with former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford in 2020 while the pair of journalists were dating.
Lizza claimed he uncovered a secret love letter on hotel stationery that proved his then-live-in girlfriend had been cheating on him with Sanford — infamous for his own extramarital affair — during his 2020 presidential campaign in a Monday newsletter post titled “Part 1: How I Found Out”.
The ex-Politico writer who ended his engagement to Nuzzi after it was revealed she was involved in a “sexting” relationship with Kennedy wrote that the discovery came when his sweetheart returned from what she told him was a reporting trip, leaving her Herschel backpack tipped over beside the bed.
In the pile of notepads and papers, he found a page that stopped him cold, according to the entry in his Telos News newsletter.
“If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house, I would still thirst for you,” she had written in a note dated March 5, 2020, according to Lizza. Their home, he noted, had no water tower.
He wrote that another page named the recipient of the letter as “Mark,” which he said confirmed what he feared: an alleged physical relationship with Sanford, a presidential candidate she had profiled months earlier.
By early 2020, the pair had signed a contract to write a book on the presidential race. Nuzzi was spending “more and more time in South Carolina,” which Lizza believed was for reporting.
Instead, the scorned ex now claims she “secretly followed him on the campaign trail” to pursue Sanford, allegedly sending him explicit photos and messages while telling Lizza she was “dealing with a crisis concerning her sick mother.”
He says she admitted the relationship intensified, ultimately leading to a sexual encounter at Sanford’s home the night she went dark and stopped answering messages, Lizza claimed.
“How could we write a book about the presidential campaign if Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of the candidates?” he wrote.
Days later, Lizza wrote that he phoned his agent and delivered the news.
“We have a big problem,” he recalled telling him. “Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford.”
Lizza says Nuzzi later told him she had become “infatuated” with Sanford after their interview and couldn’t shake him from her mind.
He wrote that she described sending explicit photos and messages as the obsession grew, and that she followed the candidate on the trail while claiming she was reporting on others.
Lizza claimed he had been “used to cleaning up Olivia’s messes,” including what he describes as her earlier entanglement with MSNBC’s former host Keith Olbermann.
According to Lizza, Nuzzi fled her New Jersey home to live with the much older anchor.
Lizza wrote that Olbermann provided her with luxury clothes, jewelry and housing before she eventually confided the relationship to him and sought his help to leave it.
Lizza claimed that Olbermann even paid Nuzzi’s college tuition while she attended Fordham University.
Lizza’s romance with Nuzzi ended after it was learned that she was having a sexting affair with Kennedy while she covered his presidential campaign.
In her forthcoming memoir, she wrote that Kennedy told her “I love you,” called her “Livvy” and said he would “take a bullet” for her.
Kennedy is also reported to have tried to calm her anxiety about an alleged brain worm with “Baby, don’t worry” and “It’s not a worm.”
Nuzzi’s sexting affair with Kennedy detonated her career, leading to her exit from New York Magazine and a year of public silence before resurfacing with a memoir and a new role at Vanity Fair.
The scandal also blew apart her relationship with Lizza, who said she made false and defamatory allegations against him while she briefly sought — and later withdrew — a protective order accusing him of harassment and blackmail.
Meanwhile, Sanford’s political career has long been defined by his extramarital affair with Argentine journalist Maria Belén Chapur, which he initially hid by claiming he was “hiking on the Appalachian Trail” before disappearing for six days in 2009.
His personal life remained turbulent afterward, including repeated disputes with his ex-wife, a trespassing complaint and the eventual collapse of his engagement to Chapur amid ongoing custody battles.
The Post has sought comment from Nuzzi, Sanford and Olbermann.
English (US)