Did RFK and Olivia Nuzzi have an affair?

Olivia Nuzzi, a star political reporter for New York Magazine, was put on leave following an admission that she and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had some sort of personal relationship.

The exact nature of the relationship is still under investigation, but some are conjecturing that the two may have had an intimate affair. So just how true are the infidelity rumors?

Do we know whether RFK Jr. and Oliva Nuzzi had an affair?

On September 19, New York Magazine released a note to its readers that Nuzzi, a “Washington Correspondent,” had told editors she “engaged” in a relationship with someone who was “relevant to the 2024 campaign” while working on a story. This, according to the highly-respected publication, was a “violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures.”

If the magazine knew about the relationship she would have been removed from covering both the campaign and the presidential race, the statement said. Nuzzi was placed on leave while the magazine conducts a “third-party review,” and the magazine said it found no “inaccuracies” or “evidence of bias” in her coverage of the presidential race.

The next day, editor-in-chief David Haskell told staff that he only learned about the “personal” nature of the relationship a few days before and that Nuzzi said it began in December 2023, after the profile was published. The relationship concluded at the end of August, he said.

“As I made clear to Olivia, she had created at the very least the appearance of a conflict, and, by choosing not to disclose this to her editors, had violated our policies and potentially damaged our readers’ trust,” Haskell wrote. Nuzzi said their relationship was “never physical, and that she avoided him as a subject and source during that period.”

If the relationship wasn’t physical, as Nuzzi claims, then what was it all about? CNN, citing someone with “direct knoledge” of the situation, said that “the relationship was emotional and digital in nature, not physical.”

In response to the whole situation, a Kennedy spokesperson said, “Mr. Kennedy only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece.” Kennedy is married to actress Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and has been since 2014. Hines frequently appeared with Kennedy at his campaign stops and has so far not commented on the controversy.

Nuzzi is a popular figure in the world of journalism and political reporting. She recently wrote a piece for the magazine about an interview with former president Donald Trump called “Peering into Donald Trump’s Ear, and Soul.” It was on a recent cover.

Politico chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza, who was engaged to Nuzzi before the pair called it quits amid the scandal, said “because of my connection to this story … my editors and I have agreed that I won’t be involved in any coverage of Kennedy in Playbook or elsewhere at Politico.”