Part 7: Day in Court
If you are new to this series, start here with Part 1.
In The Divine Comedy, Dante placed fraud and treachery in the eighth and ninth circles of Hell—reserved for the gravest human sins—because they require the deliberate misuse of reason, the highest human faculty, turning the very gift that links humanity to God into an instrument of deception and betrayal.
On the morning of October 15, 2024, Nuzzi vs. Lizza came before the D.C. Superior Court’s Domestic Violence Division, which is understaffed and overwhelmed with applications for protection orders. In 2023, four judges were responsible for more than 6,000 cases. To make things more efficient, the judges handle most of the litigation virtually. I settled into a well-appointed conference room in a sparkling new building down at The Wharf, confident that within a few hours the case would be over, Olivia’s claims would be vaporized, and I would be able to tell the full story of what I knew about Kennedy in time for voters, to the extent they cared at all, to absorb the information before mailing their ballots or heading to the polls.
I had been silent for two weeks as my name and face were sucked into the tabloid vortex Olivia had created, linking me for the rest of my life not only to her revolting relationship with one of the most psychologically broken and notoriously self-destructive figures in America, but also to a series of criminal charges she manufactured on his behalf.
She had destroyed my privacy and tried to ruin my reputation first with her recklessness and then again with her lies to the D.C. court. Daily Mail photographers stalked me, and reporters ominously texted me that they were waiting outside my home to chat. My job at Politico, where I was the chief Washington correspondent, co-author of its most valuable news franchise, and host and executive producer of its flagship podcast, was hanging by a thread. Olivia had quietly reached out to everyone we knew in Washington and spread her lurid claims, isolating me from longtime friends. “Olivia told me you blackmailed her,” Sally Quinn said to me in what was a typical conversation. “I don’t know what to think!”
But finally, I would have my day in court to tell the entire unbelievable story, expose Olivia’s lies and schemes, and reveal Bobby’s hidden hand in the whole thing. Everything would be disclosed today.
I had spent the weekend locked in a room with three extremely expensive attorneys reviewing the mountain of evidence we had accumulated—texts, emails, recordings, third-party interviews—and preparing for what I knew would be dramatic questioning of Olivia.
As I sat waiting on the video call for the presiding judge to call our case, I began outlining in my head our impending cross-examination.
Ms. Nuzzi, your first claim is that Mr. Lizza hacked your phone to blackmail you back into a relationship with him, right?
Now you and Mr. Lizza had some trust issues, didn't you? And those trust issues were in part due to the fact that you cheated on Mr. Lizza in 2020 with a presidential candidate about whom you had written a profile, right?
Ms. Nuzzi, I’d like you to look at Tab 17. This is a text exchange between you and Mr. Lizza dated March 11, 2020.
You admitted your affair with former Gov. Mark Sanford in this text to Mr. Lizza, correct?
Could you please read the highlighted portion?
Lizza: How many times did you see him?…Nuzzi: Do you mean sexually? I saw him that one night….I saw him in August for the interview. I saw him in iowa and New Hampshire for campaign stuff never privately. And I saw him in South Carolina that one night.
And that affair prevented you and Mr. Lizza from writing a book on the 2020 election, correct?
And the two of you sought couples counseling to try to recover from that affair, right?
And one of the issues that came up in couples counseling was that you surreptitiously accessed Mr. Lizza’s devices by using his thumbprint while he was sleeping, correct?
And one night, after you did this and found something you didn’t approve of, you woke up Mr. Lizza by attacking him with punches to the chest, correct?
And so as part of the recovery process after your affair with Mark Sanford, you both shared your passwords, correct?
Now, you’ve even asked Mr. Lizza for help with your password since he discovered your relationship with Mr. Kennedy, right?
I want you to look at Tab 13. I’m showing you an email from you to Mr. Lizza on August 27, 2024. You wrote this email, correct?
And here you ask Mr. Lizza for help remembering your own password, right?
Please read the highlighted section.
Peanut please help me. My mind has gone completely blank and I cannot remember my password.
And then later you texted him, “Ignore my emails I finally remembered my phone password,” correct?
And this is 10 days after Mr. Lizza discovered your 2024 affair, correct?
And nearly two months after the date you told this Court that Mr. Lizza started some sort of hacking and blackmail campaign, right?
The affidavit you submitted to the Court doesn’t say anything about the fact that you knew Mr. Lizza had your password because you gave it to him, does it?
But Ms. Nuzzi, none of that really matters, does it? Because Mr. Lizza didn’t find out about your affair by using the password you gave him, did he?
I’d like you to turn to Tab 20. Do you recognize this document?
That’s a draft of a book, or book proposal, you’re writing about the 2024 presidential campaign, isn’t it?
But it’s not the draft of the book you were writing with Mr. Lizza, is it?
It’s the story of your affair with Mr. Kennedy, including the poetry he sent you, the campaign memos you drafted for him, and the details of the stories you tried to kill for him, correct?
Ms. Nuzzi, can you please turn to page 16 of that document and read the highlighted passage?
Link didn’t trust Jessica enough to tell her the full story, but he told me. He did suggest to her that Bobby is not sober. But he wouldn’t explain further. Link is shrewd, though not shrewd enough. He didn’t think to question my loyalties. Why would he?
Jessica is Jessica Reed Kraus, correct?
And Link was a Kennedy campaign staffer who leaked an inside account of the campaign’s vice presidential selection process to you, correct?
And on the day he trusted you by providing you with that written account, you sent it to Mr. Kennedy, correct?
And so you betrayed a source and killed the story for Mr. Kennedy, correct?
And you did this repeatedly, didn’t you? The bear story, the nanny story, the story Jessica Reed Kraus told you about one of Mr. Kennedy’s former paramours in Palm Beach, the information Lis Smith provided you, the tip Josh Barro gave you, the information from the Trump campaign? You gathered it all and sent it directly to Mr. Kennedy, didn’t you? You did this so much that you joked that you felt like David Pecker, didn’t you?
Now, after Mr. Lizza found this book proposal in your apartment, he confronted you about your affair, and you told him everything, just as you had done in 2020, because you wanted him to take you back, correct?
And so once again, you lied to this Court, didn’t you?
Olivia’s lawyer looked like a grown-up Buzz McCallister from Home Alone. He was a personal injury attorney in Wheaton, Maryland, specializing in automobile accident claims. As far as I could tell, the only area of expertise listed in his bio that was relevant to Olivia’s case was his previous work handling “bad-faith litigation.”
I had wanted Buzz and Olivia to think that I was handling the case on my own, without any lawyers, so I had been dealing with Buzz directly. I was not impressed. It was only on the eve of this hearing that I revealed I was being represented by three killers from one of the most fearsome law firms in Washington.
I disclosed this to Buzz and Olivia at the same time I sent them my first filing in the case, a detailed response to Olivia’s fabrications, in which I had written:
In mid-August I discovered that Ms. Nuzzi had been cheating on me with a married man for almost a year. She admitted the affair, and over the course of weeks of conversations she confided how she fell into what she described as a “toxic” “unhealthy” “stupid” “psychotic” “crazy” “indefensible” relationship with a 70-year-old “sex addict” who told her he wanted to “possess,” “control,” and “impregnate” her. She told me that there was a “huge power disparity” between them and that he “manipulated” her. No device of Ms. Nuzzi’s was ever hacked to learn any of this information. Almost everything I know about her affair comes directly from Ms. Nuzzi herself. I broke off our engagement on August 17—the day I confronted Ms. Nuzzi about the affair—and asked Ms. Nuzzi to move out. On August 20, Ms. Nuzzi pleaded with me to consider returning to the relationship, telling me her affair “wasn’t real” and that “I don’t want to give up” on our relationship and that “I want to be the center of each other’s worlds again.” Ms. Nuzzi then asked me to tell our friends that we were still together as a couple and that we were just working out some issues.
I had wanted to tell everything in that filing, but my attorneys argued that it would be better to wait until the October 15 hearing and reveal everything in open court. Besides, one of my lawyers cautioned, the story was so wild, Byzantine, and hard to believe that I would sound crazy telling it.
But I had said enough in my filing to get the reaction I wanted: Olivia and Buzz freaked out.
Olivia had somehow not considered the possibility that I would respond to her multiple calumnies. She immediately instructed Buzz to ask the court to seal my response so it wouldn’t be available to the public. She was now panicking, aware, for the first time, that while you can weaponize a court to make outrageously false claims, the target of your scheme will eventually have the chance to respond.
Now she wanted a way out of the mess that Bobby had forced her into. Their goal was to protect him until Election Day—still three weeks away—from any damaging information being released, but she had created a very public forum in D.C. Superior Court in which I was about to tell all.
After reading my response to her lies, realizing who my attorneys were, and attempting to seal the proceedings, including the very complaint she had Rachel Adler leak to CNN, Olivia now instructed Buzz to tell my lawyers that she wanted to negotiate a settlement.
We responded that we weren’t interested, but we’d be happy to review her offer.
I was determined to have a full-blown trial that day. While I waited for her settlement letter to arrive, I continued reviewing my outline for the painful cross-examination we planned for Olivia.
Now, you also claim that Mr. Lizza threatened you with physical violence on August 17, correct?
You gave a detailed account of what happened that morning with Mr. Lizza to one of your best friends, didn’t you?
You told her intimate details, including that Mr. Lizza asked you to take off your engagement ring and that you refused, correct?
But you never mentioned the threat of violence to her, did you?
And the reason that you didn’t report this threat to the police, document it in any way, or describe it to your friend is that you fabricated this claim six weeks later, isn’t it?
Ms. Nuzzi, please turn to Tab 21. I’ll represent to you that this is a faithful transcript of an audio recording of everything that was said between you and Mr. Lizza on the morning of August 17. I want you to take as much time as you need to review that transcript, and please point to the passage where Mr. Lizza made the threat you attributed to him. And if you would like, we can play the full audio recording as well.
You can’t find it, can you?
And the reason you can’t find it is that you made up that allegation and you lied to this Court, isn’t it?
Now, let’s talk about what you did and said during those six weeks after Mr. Lizza allegedly threatened you and blackmailed you.
The next day after this alleged threat, you texted Mr. Lizza and told him that you were “so sorry and ashamed” for your affair with Mr. Kennedy.
And you also said that “I love you and I will always love you.”
And two days later, you told him that you “don’t want to give up” on your relationship with Mr. Lizza, right?
That “you want to be the center of each others worlds again,” right?
And you apologized that you “got so lost.”
Let’s look at Mr. Lizza’s response in Tab 5A.
Mr. Lizza wrote to you and said, “The reason I can forgive you and be OK about what happened is because I’m leaving all this behind.”
And you asked him to “take some time to think about it,” correct?
And you sent additional texts on August 21 telling Mr. Lizza you loved him, right? And that you would do anything you could to repair your relationship with him, right?
And then you drove down to stay with Mr. Lizza in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, August 24, correct?
And you had dinner and talked about the future, correct?
And this is a picture of you and him from that night, right? Please turn to Tab 8.
And you asked him to look online at new apartments together, correct?
And you and Mr. Lizza continued to talk and text after this weekend, correct?
For example, you texted him on August 31, thanking him for helping you and telling him again that you loved him.
And yet Ms. Nuzzi, you told this Court that through this entire period in August and September, when you were texting him, staying with him, looking at new apartments with him, asking him to take you back, that he was actually orchestrating a blackmail plot, didn’t you?
Ms. Nuzzi, you lied to this Court, didn’t you?
Olivia’s settlement offer arrived, and I scanned the short email from Buzz. Olivia had two significant requests. The first was about Mark Sanford.
“Ms. Nuzzi asks that all electronic communications involving her, Mr. Lizza and story subjects are kept confidential,” her lawyer wrote.
According to a mutual friend, Olivia had recently called Sanford and told him she feared their 2020 relationship might become public. According to this person, Olivia and Sanford agreed to deny the relationship if they were ever asked about it.
But there were still some loose ends she needed to tie up. Olivia and I had texted about her relationship with Sanford numerous times, and now she wanted those texts—and any others involving her “story subjects,” including Kennedy—sealed behind a non-disclosure agreement.
Her second request was also about hiding the truth. She asked that my formal response to her allegations that I had filed in court “be kept confidential.”
I laughed when I read that one. I realized that she actually had no idea what she was doing. “Was she really stupid enough to think that I would have no public response to her accusing me of blackmail?” I asked my attorneys.
Olivia’s obsession with Kennedy had become so cult-like that anyone who threatened it had to be destroyed, including me. Every decision she made was about protecting Kennedy and concealing information that could damage him. Her settlement offer included nothing about the salacious allegations in her application for a restraining order, which ostensibly was the whole reason we were in court. In a third bullet point, she asked me not to contact her or “surveil” her. But the overall gist of the offer gave her game away. She was weaponizing a salacious application for a restraining order to negotiate my silence.
I was now more determined for us to litigate everything in open court that day.
Now, Ms. Nuzzi, let’s talk about the period of September 7-12.
You and Mr. Lizza also spent five nights together in New York starting on September 7, correct?
At the Standard Hotel, true? Please look at Tab 15.
This is a picture of you having dinner with Mr. Lizza at Standard Grill on September 8, correct?
Please look at Tab 16.
This is another picture from you at dinner with Mr. Lizza, correct? This time at Altro Paradiso on September 10?
You even asked Mr. Lizza to go to Lululemon to purchase new clothes for you because you didn’t want to go back to your friend Gabby’s apartment, correct?
And once again, this is during the period when you told this Court you were being hacked, blackmailed, and under a threat of physical violence, correct?
Ms. Nuzzi, you also accuse Mr. Lizza of telling the press and your employer about your relationship with Mr. Kennedy, correct?
Oliver Darcy of Status News first published a story about your relationship with Mr. Kennedy, correct?
And you lied to Mr. Darcy in denying that you had a relationship with Mr. Kennedy, right?
And he told you that Mr. Lizza was not one of the sources for that story, correct?
And David Haskell, the editor of New York magazine, told you that it was not Mr. Lizza who disclosed your affair to him, correct?
In fact, when you filed the application for this protection order, you already knew who told Mr. Haskell, correct? You already knew it was Kara Swisher, didn’t you?
So when you swore to this Court that Mr. Lizza informed Oliver Darcy and New York magazine of your affair with Mr. Kennedy, you knew those were lies, didn’t you?
“Please tell her lawyer to go fuck himself,” I said after reading the letter from Buzz, which, in hindsight, is a very satisfying thing to say, even though it was literally costing me one dollar per second to say anything to my attorneys.
They translated my request into legal language that we sent Buzz:
Thank you for the written offer, which is rejected. We propose:
1. The petition [for a protection order] be dismissed with prejudice.
2. All pleadings continue to be public. Your client’s pleadings have been public for two weeks. She gave the petition to CNN and literally did an interview with the New York Times about her allegations. Any attempt now to seal these pleadings and Mr. Lizza’s response just isn’t credible. If you want to propose very targeted redactions, we might consider them.
3. The parties mutually agree not to contact each other. There is not now and never has been any surveillance. Any claim to the contrary is wrong and will be proven so in Court.
Absent an agreement, we are ready for trial today. Please let us know so we can inform the Court.
I liked the bit about the “targeted redactions” because those would tell us what information Olivia and Bobby wanted kept secret from the public before the election. So now we had to wait again while Olivia carefully read through my filing and decided precisely which of my words she wanted blacked out.
When you are falsely accused of something serious, you tend to ruminate on the moment of your exoneration, and I continued to play out the scene of Olivia’s coming cross-examination for which I had spent so many hours preparing.
Ms. Nuzzi, one of the reasons you told this Court you needed a protection order was to move your belongings out of the apartment that you shared with Mr. Lizza in Washington, correct?
You checked a box on the application requesting this Court to provide an armed police officer to escort you, correct?
But as we discussed, you drove from New York to Washington, D.C., and spent a weekend at the apartment alone with Mr. Lizza after you now claim Mr. Lizza threatened you, right?
And you left your stuff there and told Mr. Lizza you would be back in a few days, correct?
And you didn’t tell the Court in your affidavit that Mr. Lizza sent you an email almost a month before you sought the order telling you that he wanted to coordinate the return of your belongings, right?
Please look at Tab 2. This is an email from Mr. Lizza to you on September 4, 2024. Could you please read the highlighted section?
I’m happy to find a moving company and have your things packed and shipped. Just let me know when and where to send everything.
And Mr. Lizza followed up on that email on September 30, offering to coordinate a pickup of your remaining belongings when he wasn’t there or to move them to storage, right?
Could you please read that email, which is at Tab 3?
Hi Olivia, I’m moving out of the apartment this week and, as I mentioned in my email earlier this month, I’d like to facilitate getting your belongings to you. I have two proposals and am open to any ideas you might have. Option 1: I will remove all of my items and leave everything that’s yours behind and you can arrange to pick up everything from the apartment this Friday when I’m not there. Option 2: I’ll put all of your belongings in short-term storage and you can pick up everything at your convenience in the next 60 days. Please let me know what works best for you. If I don’t hear back from you I will go ahead with Option 2 and forward you the storage information. Thank you.
And even after this Court issued a temporary protection order, you had your lawyer respond to this email to coordinate the return of your remaining belongings, didn’t you?
You didn’t tell the Court about these emails from Mr. Lizza, did you?
After you leaked your application for a restraining order, several tabloid news outlets seized on the police escort as a sensational detail, didn’t they, Ms. Nuzzi?
For instance, The Daily Beast ran a headline that said, “Olivia Nuzzi Gets Police Guard Against Ex After RFK Jr. Sexts.” Do you remember that article?
And you didn’t do anything to correct these reports, did you?
You never needed a police escort, did you? Because there was no threat, and you and Mr. Lizza had already arranged to have your belongings moved, isn’t that right?
And so you lied to this Court, didn’t you, Ms. Nuzzi?
Ms. Nuzzi, you recently wrote a profile of former President Trump for New York magazine, correct?
And as part of that profile, an artist named Isabelle Brourman sketched a portrait of Mr. Trump?
And you asked Ms. Brourman to secretly record Mr. Trump at his home in Florida while she drew the portrait, correct?
She brought a recorder to the session that you purchased for her at Best Buy, correct?
She didn’t tell former President Trump she was recording him, correct?
And afterwards, you set up special email accounts to transfer the audio file, correct?
And then you deleted those email accounts, correct?
And you told Mr. Kennedy about how you and Ms. Brourman illegally recorded former President Trump at Mar-a-Lago, correct?
And then you deleted the recording, right?
And you told Mr. Lizza about this secret recording and your conversations with Mr. Kennedy, correct? During a phone call that started at 8:55 am on September 1, 2024, right?
And in that conversation, you told Mr. Lizza that the Secret Service had launched an investigation because “Florida law was violated” and “this was a legal and security issue,” correct?
And you also told him, “Poor Izzy, who I convinced that nobody would ever know about this recording is a nervous wreck” and “she’s in a really shit position that I put her in because I told her, ‘You don’t have to worry, nobody will ever know about this recording, there’s no way the Trump people will ever find out about this recording,’” correct?
Now, Ms. Nuzzi, you claim you went to the FBI and made allegations similar to the ones you made to this Court, correct?
When you went to the FBI and filed that false complaint against Mr. Lizza, did you tell the FBI that you illegally recorded the former president in Mar-a-Lago?
It was now after lunch, and Olivia’s redactions were taking a long time. I looked down at my phone and saw a breaking news headline.
“Um, I don’t think her redactions are going to matter anymore,” I announced to the lawyers assembled in the conference room.
I held up my phone to show everyone: “RFK Jr Told Olivia Nuzzi That He Wanted to Impregnate Her.” The New York Post would go with, “Spawn F. Kennedy.”
Apparently, nobody told the court about the behind-the-scenes negotiating, and the clerk had just released my full response, the one Olivia wanted to suppress, to the first reporter who asked for it. Since Olivia’s goal was to have everything sealed or redacted, the news of my filing detonated any chance of a settlement.
I was relieved. For the first time since Olivia made her false allegations, I finally had a detailed response in the public record.
Now we would be headed for a full trial that day—and the cross-examination that would tell the rest of the story.
Ms. Nuzzi, you had a phone call with Isabella Simonetti, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, on about September 26, correct?
And in that call, she described some information about the nature of your affair that contradicted what Mr. Kennedy had said publicly, correct?
And you recorded this conversation, didn’t you?
I’m now going to play the recording of your call with Ms. Simonetti:
ISABELLA SIMONETTI, WALL STREET JOURNAL: So the first is that he aggressively pursued you and that he sent you explicit messages and spent hours on the phone with you. Want me to keep going?
OLIVIA NUZZI: Keep going.
SIMONETTI: That he masturbated on video calls with you. That during your reporting of a profile on him, he sent you a flirtatious message that preceded your affair. And that your interactions with him were largely mutual and that he made promises to you that you two could be together after the election.
NUZZI: Isabella, none of this is — like this is just like such bullshit. And I feel like whoever the fuck is pushing this stuff has a vested interest in keeping this story alive with a he said-she said and I don’t want to be in a he said-she said, and I’m telling you that like none of this stuff is true.
There are two parties here who could confirm or deny whether or not these allegations are true, and I am telling you that these are not true, and I’m certain that the other party involved in this would tell you that these things are not true, because they’re not true.
And I really hope that it matters to you that I am emphatically telling you that. And I hope it matters to you if the other party involved here is emphatically telling you that. I am not commenting on anything. I think my statement from that evening will probably be the only comment that I ever make about this. I would like it to go away. That’s not a tacit admission that anything else that’s been said is true. Like, I think you can use your critical faculties here about whether or not you think any of these narratives are true. But I mean this is just — it’s just not true. These details are not true. I’m in a bind here because I’m not talking about this, you know. And I’m telling you it’s not true. And I’m certain that the only other person on the planet who could tell you whether or not it’s true would say that it’s not true. And I don’t know what a source familiar is, but there are only two people who could be familiar with this, and one of them is saying it’s not true, and I’m sure the other one would say it’s not true.
I’m sorry I’m agitated, but since the second I opened my eyes today it’s just like one thing like this after another. And like It’s just not true and I hope that you move on to a better media story. And like stop writing about this is my hope.
SIMONETTI: Well, I haven’t written anything about this, just so you know.
NUZZI: Great. And I love that, and that makes me really like you, and I hope that you never write anything about this. And I hope that this story dies.
SIMONETTI: I hear you. And I understand exactly what you’re saying—
NUZZI: I gotta, sorry, I gotta take another call. Please let me know if you for some reason decide to keep pursuing this. But I hope that my denial should matter to you. And I assume that the other party involved in this would deny this as well. And that’s all from me. So thank you for calling, and sorry I have to take this call right now but thank you.
Ms. Nuzzi, you lied to Ms. Simonetti, didn’t you?
Because what she relayed to you about your relationship with Mr. Kennedy was accurate, wasn’t it?
In fact, you told your agent, Rachel Adler of CAA, that it was all true, correct?
And around the time of this phone call with Ms. Simonetti, you created a new email account and contacted Mr. Kennedy to alert him to the Wall Street Journal story, didn’t you?
And you also sent the recording of your conversation with Ms. Simonetti to Tucker Carlson, didn’t you?
And you asked Mr. Carlson to send it to Mr. Kennedy, who is his friend, to alert Mr. Kennedy to the Journal article, and to show Mr. Kennedy that you remained loyal to him and were still willing to lie for him, correct?
Back on the video call, I watched as women from across Washington populated little boxes on my screen. None of them were sitting in fancy conference rooms or Malibu beach houses. They were juggling small children and domestic housework. One of them seemed to be taking a break from her job to make her court appearance. Another had a bruised face. One woman, who needed a Spanish-to-English translator to tell her story to the court, described a partner who threatened to blow up her apartment with explosives. During this entire ordeal, I never felt more embarrassed than I did sitting there watching these women describe actual abuse while we wasted the court’s time with Olivia’s foolish legal adventure to protect a notorious predator. One after another, these women told stories of partners who hit them and threatened them. They came prepared with texts, emails, police reports, and their own visible injuries to tell the tales.
Most of the time, the other party didn’t show up, and the protection order was issued from the bench. The judge had an enormous caseload to get through, and he dispatched each case relatively quickly.
When he finally called up our case, it was like a circus had suddenly set up in his virtual courtroom, and he seemed displeased. He could tell this one was going to take some time. “I want to say this as diplomatically as I can,” the judge cautioned all of us. “I’m not really concerned about any of the other ancillary issues that may be spinning around this matter.”
On one screen was me and my battalion of lawyers that I couldn’t afford. On another screen was Olivia, somewhere out in California. Buzz just seemed befuddled in his little box.
Listening in were a gaggle of reporters from outlets such as The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and some British tabloids. The Daily Mail and the New York Post loved this story and adopted Olivia’s clichés to describe the three main characters. Her years devoted to studying how the Mail covered public breakups had truly paid off.
Olivia had started as Bobby’s love-crossed stalker, but she had successfully fought her way to the status of victim. I began as a bit player, barely mentioned in the original Darcy piece. But Olivia had successfully dragged me into her tabloid sewer and transformed me into the scorned ex out for revenge who might also be a dangerous criminal mastermind hacking and blackmailing his ex-fiancé. Nobody knew for sure. Bobby was the irredeemable sex addict who, in the Kennedy family tradition, was never held accountable. On his behalf, Olivia had successfully turned him into a background character in a scandal that now centered on our cursed relationship.
But after today, that would change, and Bobby would be back at the center of everything.
We informed the court that we were prepared for the trial. Time was of the essence, we told the judge, given the fraudulent application that Olivia had filed. I would be lying if I didn’t admit I was a little excited for the grand finale of the cross-examination.
Ms. Nuzzi, you claim that Mr. Lizza started sometime around July 1 hacking you, correct?
And that he threatened you with violence on August 17, correct?
And yet you waited until September 28 to seek a protection order, correct?
Ms. Nuzzi, what changed between August 17 and September 28?
What changed is that the Wall Street Journal called you on September 26, isn’t it?
And what changed is that you were preparing to meet with your employer, New York Magazine, and their counsel, who were investigating your misconduct, correct?
Ms. Nuzzi, you told your friends, [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], about a plot you hatched to draw attention away from you and Mr. Kennedy and onto Mr. Lizza, didn’t you?
You told them that you were going to invent a story about “a crazy ex,” didn’t you?
You told them that you were going to drive to California to evade cooperation with New York magazine’s investigation, didn’t you?
And you told them that you were going to make up a story about how you were “on the run” from Mr. Lizza, so you wouldn’t be available to hand over your phone to New York magazine, correct?
And, Ms. Nuzzi, you also told your friends about how you planned to use the alleged FBI investigation to deflect attention and accountability, didn’t you?
You told them that you were going to tell New York magazine that you couldn’t send them your phone because the FBI needed it for their investigation, didn’t you?
And when one friend asked you whether you were really going to hand over your phone to the FBI, you told her, “Of course not,” didn’t you?
And, in fact, you never gave the FBI your phone, did you?
And, Ms. Nuzzi, you also told your friends that you were going to leak the fact of the alleged FBI investigation to the New York Times, as a way to stop the Wall Street Journal article or, at the very least, to distract attention from the article, didn’t you?
And you told a friend that one of your attorneys thought this was “a good idea,” to leak the FBI complaint to the Times, didn’t you?
You told that friend in a conversation on Saturday, September 28, that the entire FBI report was done “for PR reasons,” didn’t you?
And, Ms. Nuzzi, you did indeed leak to The New York Times that you had filed a complaint with the FBI, didn’t you?
You told the newspaper that there was a “criminal investigation,” didn’t you?
But the Times never used that language, did they?
Because the reporters there know the difference between a complaint and an investigation, don’t they?
Anyone can file a complaint, right?
But that doesn’t mean there’s an investigation, correct?
And, in fact, you know there is no FBI investigation, and there never was one, don’t you?
You know that the FBI never contacted anyone, including Mr. Lizza, don’t you?
In fact, the FBI never followed up with you at all, did they?
Ms. Nuzzi, when was the last time you spoke to Mr. Kennedy?
Isn’t it true that you talked to Mr. Kennedy on or about September 27, just before you came to this Court and filed this fraudulent application for a protection order?
And isn’t it true that in that conversation, Mr. Kennedy accused you of being disloyal to him?
And isn’t it true that you denied that?
And isn’t it true that he told you that you needed to prove your loyalty to him and help him get past Election Day without any of the information that you provided to Mr. Lizza becoming public?
And, Ms. Nuzzi, isn’t it true that Mr. Kennedy ordered you to file this restraining order against Mr. Lizza to prove your loyalty to Mr. Kennedy?
That’s what you told [REDACTED], right?
And that’s what you told [REDACTED], right?
So if [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] said in sworn affidavits that you told them the details of this conversation you had with Mr. Kennedy and your joint plot to file false charges against Mr. Lizza, would they be lying?
Ms. Nuzzi, you didn’t file this protection order to protect yourself from Mr. Lizza, did you? You filed it to protect Bobby Kennedy’s secrets from being revealed to the American people before the presidential election. Correct?
Back on the video call, it was Buzz’s turn to speak. There was a serious problem, he told the judge. Olivia needed the trial delayed until November.
“And what’s the reason for that?” the judge asked.
“There’s currently a federal investigation involving the events giving rise to this petition that does not allow the petitioner to adequately testify,” Buzz said. “She cannot speak to the issues that are being investigated such that she can testify properly here in court today. She cannot, one, testify as to what happened, how the events unfolded, nor can she be cross−examined about the same events.”
“And I’m sorry,“ the judge interrupted. ”Why is that, legally?”
“It’s an—an FBI investigation, Your Honor,” Buzz stammered.
The judge looked incredulous. “She’s not legally prohibited from talking to anybody,” he said.
Buzz looked deeply uncomfortable as he parroted the bullshit Olivia had fed him.
“I think it’s an ongoing investigation,” Buzz said. His use of the phrase I think made him look so unconvincing that you could hear people snickering. “And so the FBI has explained to her that she can’t testify. That’s my understanding of the situation, Your Honor.”
It was all a lie, and not a very well thought-out one. There was no evidence of any investigation, and no evidence that the FBI knew or cared about Olivia’s protection order. The judge realized it.
“In terms of her not being able to testify, I don’t know of any legal impediment to that,” the judge said. “She brought this case. So she can pursue it or not pursue it, and the FBI can’t prevent her from talking regarding a separate case that she’s brought.”
My attorney argued as forcefully as he could that the entire FBI ruse was absurd, that when the FBI wants to intervene in a civil case, it comes to court and makes its own argument, and that we were prepared for a trial right now “to provide evidence, including testimony and exhibits” to “show that Ms. Nuzzi’s claims are baseless.”
But none of it mattered. The judge said that he had to hear 20-30 cases each day. It was already after 2:30 PM. He had women with actual threats against them waiting for his attention. He also no doubt wanted our little circus to fold up and disappear. He told us to come back for a trial on November 19, two weeks after voters would choose the next president.
Buzz filed a motion with the court, officially laying out Olivia’s excuse for not testifying. As evidence for the alleged FBI investigation, Buzz attached a copy of the New York Times article that Olivia had generated.
I had been wrong. Olivia knew exactly what she was doing.
Recently, Olivia published a 320-page account of the events of 2024, and she never once made any allegations of hacking, blackmail, or—aside from disclosing that her brother offered to murder me—any threats of violence. Olivia learned that you can get away with saying all kinds of awful things in a court filing that you can’t actually say publicly without opening yourself up to serious legal consequences. And Olivia and her lawyers have been careful to never publicly repeat the allegations she made to the D.C. court.
“She’s scared you are going to sue her for defamation,” one of her friends told me. (A very reasonable fear.)
Olivia did, however, make a significant revelation in her book, one that only becomes important once you understand all of this additional context.
She disclosed that all of the actions she took in September and October to harm me began after a conversation with Kennedy, who, she writes, told her that his relationship with both his wife and with Trump was precarious and that he needed Olivia to act to protect him from the release of any additional details of their affair until after the election was over.
As my lawyers and I prepared for our new November court date, we considered some drastic measures, including issuing a subpoena to Kennedy. But first, we sent Olivia’s lawyer, a new guy named Ari Wilkenfeld, a letter advising him to resolve the case immediately—before Election Day. We explained that he was representing a con artist and offered him a taste of what Olivia could expect in court.
“We have countless pieces of evidence to support our view of this case,” we wrote. “At best, we hope that this preview will enable you to ask your client some hard questions. At worst, it will demonstrate that you have a client who has been misleading you. Any trial in this matter will be painful for all, but particularly devastating for your client.”
The letter continued:
As your client knows, this was the second time she had ruined their opportunity to satisfy their book deal by having an inappropriate relationship with a Presidential candidate whom she was covering. Ms. Nuzzi may have told her friends that she and the 2020 candidate agreed to deny everything, but her own text exchanges in our possession admit the earlier, unethical affair....
[A]ny trial will implicate your client’s true motivation for filing a petition for a civil protection order. As Ms. Nuzzi has recounted to friends who can provide evidence, Bobby Kennedy asked her to file the civil protection order to demonstrate her loyalty to him. In other words, she used a false filing with a court to pass a loyalty test. And Ms. Nuzzi freely admitted to others that she filed a (false, in our view) FBI report regarding hacking to have an excuse not to turn over her phone to her employer. We look forward to presenting evidence of her motivations at trial…
[T]here is a very short window to resolve this now and have the parties move on with their lives. This misguided adventure by Ms. Nuzzi needs to end immediately. Absent that, we will continue our trial preparation, including seeking further evidence from those to whom Ms. Nuzzi has disclosed her real motivations for this petition.
Ari, who was smarter but more devious than Buzz, never responded. On November 8, three days after Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States, Olivia quietly asked the court to dismiss the case. Trump announced his intention to nominate Kennedy as Secretary of HHS a few days later.
I never had my day in court. But I do have an unpaid legal bill for $127,000.00.
I released a statement when the case was dismissed:
Olivia shamelessly used litigation with false and defamatory allegations as a public relations strategy. When required to do so, she refused to defend her claims in court last month. She then sought to hide my response to her claims from the public by seeking to seal the proceedings that she began. Now, on the eve of a hearing at which she knew her lies would be exposed, she has taken the only course available to her and withdrawn her fabricated claims. Olivia lied to me for almost a year. She lied to her editors. She lied to her readers. She lied to her colleagues. She lied to reporters. And she lied to the judge in this case.
Olivia did not care for my remarks. She told a mutual friend that she thought I was “too harsh.”
What I wanted to say in my statement, but couldn’t at the time because nobody would understand it back then, was this:
Surely, there is a special place in Hell for someone who brings false charges before a domestic violence court to aid the election of Donald Trump and the installation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Please cut out the bullshit and tell me what this is all about in 25 words or less.