The ex-fiance of Olivia Nuzzi, the journalist who allegedly had a fling with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claims Kennedy told Nuzzi that he was using ketamine.
Ryan Lizza, the former Politico journalist, described in a new Substack post Monday a running list of what he claims Nuzzi had told him about the Health and Human Services secretary.
“Kennedy’s aides believed he was using drugs again, and Kennedy confessed to Olivia that he was using ketamine,” Lizza wrote, in the latest of a series of posts about his and Nuzzi’s doomed relationship.
Kennedy, 71, has said that he used heroin for 14 years, beginning when he was 15 years old.
Nuzzi, in her book, claimed Kennedy also admitted last year to taking psychedelic drugs like DMT. Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services did not return a request for comment at the time. Kennedy denies having any interaction with Nuzzi beyond a magazine interview.
Lizza, 51, also claimed that he had learned from Nuzzi, 32, that Kennedy “has a pregancy fetish.” In addition, he wrote, Nuzzi “believed Kennedy was a sex addict and that he was having multiple affairs, including with both his [REDACTED] and his [REDACTED].”
Kennedy has been married to actress Cheryl Hines, 60, since 2014. He has denied having any sexual relationship with Nuzzi. Nuzzi said the relationship “never turned physical” but that they shared intimate photos.
In a post last week, Lizza accused Nuzzi of having an affair with another politician whom she had profiled in 2019: Mark Sanford, the 65-year-old Republican former congressman and governor of South Carolina. Sanford in 2009 admitted to having an affair, after which his wife filed for divorce.
Lizza and Nuzzi became engaged in 2022—two years after Lizza says he found out about the alleged Sanford affair—but he broke things off after Nuzzi’s alleged affair with Kennedy surfaced last year.
Neither Kennedy’s office nor Nuzzi immediately responded to a request for comment from the Daily Beast about Lizza’s new post.
Nuzzi was named Vanity Fair’s west coast editor earlier this year after New York magazine fired her. But the magazine is reportedly looking into the Sanford allegation.
“We were taken by surprise, and we are looking at all the facts,” a spokesperson for the publication told the New York Times last month.
Two Conde Nast insiders told Semafor Monday that executives will likely let Nuzzi’s temporary contract expire in light of the allegations.
Lizza on Monday also described the alleged power dynamics between Kennedy and Nuzzi.
“Olivia explained that Kennedy had told her he wanted to ‘bind,’ ‘subdue,’ ‘tame,’ ‘possess,’ and ‘discipline’ her, and that these sexual proclivities for bondage and ‘total submission’ carried over into the rest of their relationship in the way that he maintained ‘control’ over her by setting all of the terms of their relationship and by his use of withdrawing his affection and attention as a means of making her more obedient and subservient to him,” he wrote.
“She explained that many of her greatest regrets about the relationship were the ways she crossed ethical lines as a journalist to regain his attention during periods when he cut off contact with her.”
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