Disgraced former political journalist Olivia Nuzzi's ex-fiancé, Ryan Lizza, has alleged that she had been "sleeping with" former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford long before her later "online relationship" with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Lizza has claimed that Nuzzi was having sex with Sanford in 2020 while the pair of journalists were dating.
Lizza said he discovered a hidden love letter written on hotel stationery that proved his live-in girlfriend had been having an affair with Sanford — who was already known for his own scandalous affair — while he was running his 2020 presidential campaign. He shared the story in a Monday newsletter post titled "Part 1: How I Found Out."
Sex with Sanford
Nuzzi, 32, has been easing back into the spotlight to promote her upcoming tell-all book, "American Canto", about a year after her emotional entanglement with Trump's health secretary. But her book tour hit an unexpected snag on Monday after Lizza published a blistering Substack post accusing her of being unfaithful to him.
The former Politico journalist — who called off his engagement to Nuzzi after learning she'd been in a "sexting" relationship with Kennedy — wrote that everything unraveled when she came home from what she claimed was a reporting trip and dropped her Herschel backpack beside the bed.
As he sorted through the stack of notebooks and papers that spilled out, he came across one page that froze him in his tracks, he recounted in his Telos News newsletter.
According to Lizza, the note dated March 5, 2020, read, "If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house, I would still thirst for you." He added that there wasn't even a water tower anywhere near their home, making the message all the more jarring.
He said another page identified the letter's recipient as "Mark," which, in his mind, confirmed his worst suspicion: that she had a physical relationship with Sanford, the presidential hopeful she had profiled just a few months earlier.
By early 2020, the couple had already signed a deal to co-author a book about the election. Nuzzi began spending "more and more time in South Carolina," which Lizza assumed was part of her reporting.
But now, the scorned ex contends that she actually "secretly followed him on the campaign trail" so she could see Sanford — allegedly sending him explicit photos and messages while telling Lizza she was tied up handling a "crisis concerning her sick mother."
Lizza says that she later admitted that things escalated between her and Sanford, culminating in a sexual encounter at Sanford's home on the very night she went silent and stopped responding to him.
"How could we write a book about the presidential campaign if Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of the candidates?" he wrote.
As Dirty as It Gets
A few days later, Lizza said, he called his agent to break the news. "We have a big problem," he remembered saying. "Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford." According to Lizza, Nuzzi later admitted she had become "infatuated" with Sanford after interviewing him and couldn't get him out of her head.
He wrote that she told him the fixation led her to send Sanford explicit messages and photos, and that she followed him on the campaign trail while pretending she was reporting on other candidates.
Lizza also claimed he'd long been "cleaning up Olivia's messes," pointing to what he described as her earlier involvement with former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann.
Lizza said that, at one point, Nuzzi fled her home in New Jersey to move in with the much older TV anchor.
According to him, Olbermann showered her with designer clothes, jewelry, and a place to stay before she eventually opened up to Lizza about the relationship and asked for his help to leave it. He also claimed that Olbermann paid her Fordham University tuition.
Lizza and Nuzzi's own relationship fell apart after it emerged that she had been sexting with Kennedy while covering his presidential campaign.
In her upcoming memoir, she writes that Kennedy told her "I love you," called her "Livvy," and said he would "take a bullet" for her. He also reportedly tried to soothe her fears about an alleged worm in his brain, telling her, "Baby, don't worry," and "It's not a worm."
The scandal over her digital affair with Kennedy derailed Nuzzi's career, prompting her departure from New York Magazine and leading to a year away from the public eye. She is now returning with her memoir and a new position at Vanity Fair.
