In D.C. court, the Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza disputes continue

Both Nuzzi and Lizza appeared via web link on Tuesday in Superior Court, where Judge Sean Staples set a Nov. 19 trial date to consider the petition Nuzzi filed for a protective order. The court is also considering a motion to close the proceedings from the public.

In Nuzzi’s petition for a protective order filed two weeks ago, she accused Lizza of harassment, blackmail, hacking and making violent threats. A judge had previously granted her a temporary order, which expired Tuesday.

Nuzzi was placed on leave last month from New York magazine after she acknowledged she had a “personal,” nonphysical relationship with an individual she profiled in November 2023. She had only written about Kennedy — then a third-party candidate for president, who has since endorsed former president Donald Trump — and a person close to the situation confirmed to The Washington Post that it was Kennedy.

Lizza, chief Washington correspondent for Politico and co-author of the outlet’s prominent Playbook newsletter, has taken a leave of absence while Politico conducts its own investigation into him. The reporter had initially recused himself from covering Kennedy when Nuzzi’s relationship became public.

In a document filed with the court Friday and made public Tuesday, Lizza said Nuzzi’s allegations were “defamatory lies that were meant to create sensational headlines, damage my reputation, and distract from press attention about Ms. Nuzzi’s catastrophically reckless behavior.”

He also denied Nuzzi’s allegations of hacking, leaking information to the press and threatening physical violence. “I was devastated when I learned of Ms. Nuzzi’s nearly year-long affair, and I ended our engagement over it. Now I am forced to defend myself against baseless accusations in this Court,” the filing reads.

Nuzzi’s lawyer, Andrew Jezic, said in a statement that “Mr. Lizza’s intent was to harass and humiliate Ms. Nuzzi and that he utilized the press to do so.”

“Filings such as this, full of salacious and irrelevant claims, that she will not dignify with a response, furthered his efforts, as described in her initial filing for the protective order,” Jezic said. “Ms. Nuzzi’s only objective, in seeking intervention from law enforcement and the Court, is to ensure her safety and to be left alone.”

In her original petition, Nuzzi alleged that Lizza “threatened me with physical violence” to force her to take on “his share of financial responsibility to a joint contract with a book publisher.” The couple had planned to write a book about the 2020 election.

In his filing, Lizza said he told Nuzzi that she should assume financial responsibility for the contract. A person at Simon and Schuster with knowledge of the project (who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the news media) said that the book is still under contract and that the publisher has not requested repayment of their advance.

Nuzzi also alleged that Lizza stole a personal device from her and, starting in July, began hacking her personal devices to stalk her and gather materials to blackmail her back into a relationship. In the order, she also wrote that “I have reason to believe” he altered materials and distributed them anonymously to the media, threatening “to make public personal information about me to destroy my life, career, and reputation — a threat he has since carried out.”

Lizza’s filing includes, for the first time, his lengthy narrative about the messy dissolution of their relationship. Lizza wrote that he discovered in “mid-August” that Nuzzi had been “cheating on me with a married man for almost a year.” Lizza said that Nuzzi described the affair as “toxic,” “psychotic” and “indefensible,” and that she said the married man was a “70-year-old ‘sex addict’ who told her he wanted to ‘possess,’ ‘control’ and ‘impregnate’ her.” Kennedy is not named in the filing. Lizza says he broke off their engagement Aug. 17.

Lizza claims that, contrary to Nuzzi’s allegation that he was trying to persuade her to stay in the relationship, it was his ex-fiancée who was trying to persuade him not to break up with her. “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,” he wrote.

Lizza said he persuaded Nuzzi to remove reporting material from her affair partner from her most recent story, a move he says Nuzzi told a mutual friend may have saved her job. Her last article published for New York magazine before news of the affair broke was a Sept. 9 story about examining former president Donald Trump’s ear after his assassination attempt.

During Tuesday’s virtual court hearing, Nuzzi’s video showed her in a tastefully decorated room, wearing a black crew neck shirt, with her hair loose. She kept a straight face throughout the attorneys’ negotiations. Lizza appeared seated with his attorneys, in a blue sweater with a gray jacket. He looked disappointed when the judge decided that the trial would be postponed until November.

The breakup of the prominent media couple has taken on outsize media attention, in part because of the influence that each of them wields in media and because of the appearance of a violation of journalistic norms that require the disclosure of personal conflicts of interest.

New York magazine initially found “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias” in Nuzzi’s published work but is now conducting “a more thorough third-party review.”

The scandal has also brought intense scrutiny to Kennedy’s relationship with his wife, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress Cheryl Hines, who has been photographed by paparazzi with and without her wedding ring since news of the relationship emerged. Kennedy has not spoken publicly about the matter. Reached Tuesday evening, a Kennedy spokesperson said, “The accusations about Robert Kennedy are categorically false and he will not participate in reporting on triple hearsay allegations made in a dispute between other people.”