Journalist Olivia Nuzzi and Vanity Fair are severing ties.
Nuzzi joined Vanity Fair in September 2025, after departing New York magazine in 2024 in the wake of revelations that she’d had a relationship with her source, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, then a presidential candidate.
The fallout from the affair has continued after Nuzzi’s ex-fiancé, former Politico correspondent Ryan Lizza, recently accused Nuzzi of additional ethical breaches.
“Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi have mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year,” according to a joint statement from spokespeople for Vanity Fair and Nuzzi provided to Business Insider.
A third-party investigation into her reporting at New York magazine revealed no bias, but the magazine said at the time that her relationship with the ex-presidential candidate violated their conflict-of-interest standards.
Following her split with Lizza and New York magazine, Nuzzi, a former star political reporter, moved to Los Angeles. She published a memoir, “American Canto” on Tuesday, in which she detailed the past 10 years of political reporting and her relationship with “the politician,” understood to be RFK Jr.
Since their split, Lizza and Nuzzi have been engaged in an ongoing reputational battle, with each publicly accusing the other of engaging in behaviors that, while not illegal, undermine each other’s journalistic credibility.
Nuzzi, in a petition for a temporary protective order against him in late 2024, accused Lizza of blackmailing her and threatening to destroy her career, which Lizza has denied. She later withdrew the petition.
After a lull, the public acrimony continued with the revelation of Nuzzi’s book, followed by a series of Substack posts from Lizza.
He has suggested in online postings that Nuzzi used her position as a reporter to “catch and kill” unflattering stories about RFK Jr. He also accused her of having another unusual relationship with a different subject.
A spokesperson for Nuzzi did not respond to questions about Lizza’s allegations. In a post for Emily Sundberg’s Substack, Feed Me, she wrote it was “another attempt to harass, humiliate, and harm me until I am as destroyed as he seems to be,” and called Lizza’s posts “fan fiction-slash-revenge porn.”
