Washington Reporter Olivia Nuzzi and RFK Jr. Apparently Had an Emotional Relationship

The 2024 election season has already delivered plenty of bombshells, and many of the strangest ones have been about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The man has a lot of weird animal stories.

The latest wave of reporting on RFK Jr., though, involves a widely acclaimed magazine writer.

Olivia Nuzzi, who currently works for New York Magazine, has been placed on leave while a "third-party review is conducted after allegations that she had a personal relationship with RFK Jr." Here's what we know about the saga, and why it's been such a hot topic among mainstream journalists.

According to New York Magazine, Olivia's leave was over allegations that she “had engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign.”

The magazine did not identify the subject, but CNN heard from a source with direct knowledge of the matter that it was RFK Jr., who ran for president in 2024 and then endorsed Donald Trump.

CNN also said that the relationship was "emotional and digital" in nature, and not physical. A spokesperson for Kennedy, meanwhile, said that “Mr. Kennedy only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece.”

Nuzzi also released a statement to CNN in which she acknowledged that her relationship with RFK Jr. got personal and she regretted the lapse in judgment.

“Earlier this year, the nature of some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal. During that time, I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source,” she said. “The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”

She wrote a profile of RFK Jr. last November and has written numerous other pieces on Trump and the 2024 election in the months since. According to a statement from New York Magazine, the author recently disclosed a relationship that was in “violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures.”

“Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign,” the statement added. They also added that the reporting did not show evidence of bias, but they regretted that they had betrayed their readers' trust.

This kind of relationship with the subject of a journalist's reporting is a major violation of the ethics of journalism, especially when those relationships remain hidden.

Journalists are supposed to be able to report on stories without allowing themselves to be charmed by the people those stories are about. Nuzzi appears to have fallen short on that front, putting her entire career as a journalist in jeopardy in the process. Of course, it's also a salacious story, which is part of the reason it has been so widely covered in the press.