Q&A: Ryan Lizza on the RFK Scandal, His New Venture, and Politico’s ‘Appalling’ Threats

In 2018, it was announced that Ryan Lizza, the soon-to-be chief Washington correspondent at Politico, and Olivia Nuzzi, a politics writer at New York magazine, were writing a book together. In 2022, they got engaged. Quite the Washington power couple, I thought. But last summer, things spun wildly out of control: it was revealed that Nuzzi had allegedly conducted an online relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the presidential candidate who is now the Health and Human Services secretary. Eventually, Nuzzi took Lizza to court, requesting a protective order and alleging that he orchestrated a harassment and blackmail campaign against her. Politico said that Lizza would take a leave of absence while Nuzzi’s claims were being investigated. She ultimately withdrew her request (her lawyer said this step was for her own protection, on the grounds that Lizza was using the process to defame her). Lizza, who has denied any wrongdoing and accused Nuzzi of using the process to defame him, moved over to Politico Magazine. Nuzzi, for her part, left New York. The book is no more.

Then, last week, Lizza announced that he had left Politico and was launching a new venture—Telos—on Substack. “The main reason?” he wrote in his debut post. “Their style of political coverage is not meeting the unprecedented moment of democratic peril we are facing.” This rationale faced some skepticism, however. Dylan Byers, a media reporter at Puck, posted on X that Lizza’s claim was, in fact, “not the main reason.” (Byers subsequently expanded his critique into an article.) And quickly, the situation got ugly: Politico sent Lizza a legal letter, accusing him of breaking an agreement not to disparage the outlet—Lizza denied having done so—and ordering him to delete his Telos post. Lizza alleges that Politico has since demanded that he take down three more articles, and threatened to sue. On Saturday, he was scheduled to attend the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as a guest of his former employer, but as Oliver Darcy reported in Status on Monday, that didn’t happen. (Politico was asked for comment, but a spokeswoman declined.)