Ryan Lizza dropped Part III of his Substack series on the night before Thanksgiving. Not typically a moment to drop a big piece of news, although navel-gazing journalists spent much of the long holiday weekend analyzing Part III and what it all means for the state of American journalism. While Lizza is being widely mocked for his big cliffhanger, I actually think Part III is an extremely damning look at how Olivia Nuzzi was applauded and rewarded for her unethical behavior, sh-tty journalism and lack of integrity. If you want to pay for the Substack, go here to read it. Some highlights from Part III: Catch and Kill.
*Olivia Nuzzi was obsessed with getting an advanced copy of the New Yorker’s profile of Robert Kennedy Jr, due to be published in August 2024. Lizza first thinks that Nuzzi wants an advanced copy because she’s jealous that journalist Clare Malone scooped her with Kennedy’s dead-bear-cub story. But Nuzzi wanted a copy because for months, she had been running a catch-and-kill operation on behalf of Kennedy and his campaign. Lizza writes that Nuzzi “behind the scenes and without much explanation, she insisted [Kennedy] would be the next president. What I didn’t know at the time was that she was secretly working to help make Bobby the next president.”
*Nuzzi already had the dead-bear-cub scoop from a confidential source. Instead of reporting the story or handing it to someone else at New York Magazine, she “outed the source to Bobby and told him everything she had learned….Together, they plotted to kill it, or at the very least, get ahead of it.”
*Nuzzi eventually confessed to Lizza that she did this often throughout 2024: “canvassing sources who trusted her, obtaining their opposition research on Bobby, and then feeding it directly to the candidate….Olivia also obtained information to help Bobby acquire Secret Service protection, advised him on debate prep, including what suit to wear for a key appearance, and provided him with detailed media strategy advice, among other things.”
*Per Lizza: “During much of this period, Olivia was reporting and writing a major article about Joe Biden, considered the single most devastating piece about the president in all of 2024.”
*Nuzzi helped Kennedy negotiate his endorsement of Trump: “Later, she would use a major assignment to gather intelligence that would help Bobby negotiate the terms of his Trump endorsement, a caper that included a clandestine operation at Mar-a-Lago never revealed. Olivia had essentially become a private political operative for Bobby Kennedy, while publicly posing as a hard-nosed reporter. In other words, what you have been reading about here is not really a scandal about sex, but a scandal about journalistic ethics.”
*Nuzzi turned to Jessica Reed Kraus, “a Substack writer and Kennedy propagandist who is close to Bobby” to help her decode Kennedy. Per Lizza: “At first, Olivia saw her as a rival and was jealous of Jessica’s proximity to Bobby, so she tried to damage Jessica’s credibility with anonymous Reddit posts. Later, Olivia switched tactics and befriended Jessica, gaining a steady stream of intel about Bobby that helped her understand how many other women he might be having affairs with, whether there was any truth to the rumors that he had something to do with his ex-wife’s death, the real story behind whispers inside the campaign that Bobby, a former heroin addict, was using drugs again, and whether there was any chance Bobby would ever leave his wife, Cheryl Hines.”
*Nuzzi wormed her way into Kennedy’s campaign and became his eyes and ears: “One day, a young campaign aide approached Olivia with an inside account of the chaotic process that led Bobby to select Nicole Shanahan as his running mate. Like the bear story, it was journalistic gold for anyone covering the Kennedy campaign. But instead of pursuing the story, Olivia convinced the staffer to remain loyal to Bobby—and then informed the candidate of everything. She had successfully caught and killed an embarrassing tell-all from a campaign whistleblower whose identity she revealed to the candidate.”
*Nuzzi’s piece on Joe Biden, who she saw as Kennedy’s opponent: “A week after Bobby’s event—yes, he wore a blue suit—Olivia published her piece about Biden, savaging him as a drooling invalid. I was shocked when I read the piece because she had included an anecdote about Biden not remembering the name of a ‘Democratic megadonor’ that I knew had been told to her off the record. ‘How did you get that in there?’ I asked. ‘I just sort of Michael Wolffed it,’ she replied, which was jarring to me because previously she was scrupulous about sourcing. Her piece was promoted as an account of ‘the conspiracy of silence to protect’ Biden.”
*Nuzzi schemed to send an artist friend to Mar-a-Lago to sketch Trump: “Olivia had a brilliant plan to help secure Trump’s cooperation with her article. She convinced New York magazine to commission artist Isabelle Brourman to draw a portrait of Trump to accompany the piece. Trump had taken a liking to Izzy when she worked as a sketch artist during his Manhattan trial, and Olivia figured he would enjoy having her around him. She was right. But Olivia was excluded from Izzy’s key session with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and so Olivia adjusted the plan. She sent Izzy inside Trump’s Palm Beach compound with a recorder in her bag, which rolled as Izzy drew Trump, who was taking campaign meetings with the likes of Matt Gaetz, Susie Wiles, and others. With any luck, Olivia would capture some great material for her piece and some intel for Bobby as he negotiated the endorsement. According to Olivia, when Izzy left the session, Izzy was hung up on something she believed Trump might have said about Butler, Pennsylvania—something explosive that, if she were correct, would shatter our understanding of recent history.”
Yeah, Lizza really did a cliffhanger about how the Butler shooting was not what it seemed, all because he wants people to pay for his Substack. That’s amoral. But I meant what I said about this being a fascinating look at Nuzzi’s sleaze and compromised ethics. She fully insinuated herself within Kennedy’s half-assed campaign, working as a de facto senior staffer, leaving all of her journalist’s ethics at the door because she wanted to bang a man who sounds like a crusty carburetor. And by the way, she was banging him. She wasn’t doing all of this because she *hoped* he would bang her. WTF did her editors at New York Mag think last year?
Photos courtesy of Lizza’s IG, Nuzzi’s IG, HBO/Real Time and Cover Images.
