Part 6: 'Bobby was behind the whole thing.'

If you are new to this series, start here with Part 1.

The photographer was waiting for me outside. Somehow, he knew that I made a daily run to this coffee shop. Did she give the Daily Mail my address? He spotted me approaching, followed me inside to the counter, and waited to hear me say my name to the cashier for my to-go order to confirm he had the right target. Then he scurried back outside and took up a position at the entrance to my building. This guy was a pro.

Now he had an unobstructed line of sight as I walked some 50 yards, totally exposed, back to my front door. He was calm, not like the panicky pack of paparazzi you see on the news sometimes, jostling each other and madly snapping bursts of photos. The Daily Mail guy had some 30 seconds to shoot—an eternity—and he was taking his time, chilling on a concrete bench, adjusting his cartoonishly long telephoto lens at his leisure. I only noticed him halfway through the kill zone. Should I turn around? Oh, God, that would be worse, right? I just smiled and walked by.

The picture was posted later that night, and the headline could not have been better for Olivia and Bobby than if they had written it themselves:

Their plan worked. Never mind that every part of the headline was false. There was no blackmail. I was fetching a mocha and a matcha latte, not “breaking cover.” And I was not the source who exposed Olivia’s affair. (Hilariously, the Daily Mail corrected its original reporting about what kind of drink I had in my hand, changing it from a green juice to a matcha latte, but this blatantly defamatory headline remains on the article.)

During their fateful conversation in late September—when Olivia and Bobby plotted ways to block my reporting for Politico and kill a Wall Street Journal article he feared could cost him his marriage and a Trump cabinet post—Bobby instructed Olivia to go to Washington, D.C.’s domestic violence court and file a restraining order against me based on false allegations.

I know this because Olivia immediately told a mutual friend about the conversation with Bobby, and the friend called me and gave me a detailed readout of the call so I could prepare, including by retaining a lawyer.

“Bobby is the one who told her to do the protective order,” Olivia’s friend said.

A second person who is close to both Olivia and Bobby corroborated this version of events.

“Bobby was behind the whole thing,” this person told me.