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The explosive allegations came weeks before Nuzzi’s forthcoming book is set to be released
Kelly Rissmanin New YorkSaturday 22 November 2025 04:40 GMTComments
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Vanity Fair is “looking at all the facts” after Olivia Nuzzi’s former partner made shocking new allegations, including accusing her of having an affair with Mark Sanford, according to a report.
Political journalist Ryan Lizza, Nuzzi’s ex-fiancé, wrote a Substack essay titled “Part 1: How I Found Out” in which he described finding an incomplete love letter in 2020 addressed to another man. He went on to accuse Nuzzi of sleeping with Mark Sanford, the former GOP South Carolina governor and one-time presidential candidate.
Nuzzi wrote a 2019 article for New York Magazine about Sanford’s failed 2020 bid, raising concerns for her current employer about her compliance with journalistic ethics, according to the New York Times.
“We were taken by surprise, and we are looking at all the facts,” a spokesperson for Vanity Fair told the paper about Lizza’s allegations.
A lawyer for Nuzzi denied the allegations, pointing out that her upcoming tell-all book American Canto only mentions one “improper relationship”.
“In American Canto, Ms. Nuzzi discusses the only instance in her long career as a journalist in which she had an improper relationship with someone she was covering,” a lawyer for Nuzzi told the NYT, noting his client would “not dignify efforts to impugn her character with any future response.”
open image in galleryVanity Fair is reporting reviewing its ties to Olivia Nuzzi after her ex-partner made shocking allegations about an affair with Mark Sanford (AFP via Getty Images)The Independent has asked the magazine and a lawyer for Nuzzi for comment.
Lizza’s essay was published weeks before American Canto’s release on December 2.
“I flipped to another page and saw a name and the first line of an unfinished love letter to him that included enough details to confirm a physical relationship and the hint of some kind of falling out,” Lizza claimed. “My heart stopped when I realized who he was. He was a famous politician, 32 years older than Olivia, and well-known for a sex scandal.”
His explosive essay also mentioned another figure: political commentator Keith Olbermann. Nuzzi had an “unusual relationship” with Olbermann, whom Lizza alleged “paid for her to attend college,” gifted her “Tom Ford and Hervé Léger dresses and some $15,000 worth of Cartier jewelry” and lived with her in Manhattan.
open image in galleryRyan Lizza claimed he found Nuzzi’s partly written love letter to former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, whom she had profiled in 2019 (Getty Images for Politicon)Olbermann, a frequent critic of the current administration, confirmed to the NYT that the pair once lived together — in a Trump building on the Upper East Side, “if you can believe the irony.” He came across Nuzzi’s writing on Twitter and thought she’d be a good fit for a show he hosted at the time, he said.
Instead of a professional relationship, however, they had a romantic one.
“It was marriage-y,” he told the paper, noting they got puppies and tattoos together. “It was very much an at-home-with-the-dogs sort of thing.”
“One of the things that drew us together is that neither of us really liked people,” he continued.
Nuzzi fired back at Olbermann's comments, telling the NYT: “I have not ever before and will not now acknowledge any claims made by this person.”
Before joining Vanity Fair this year, Nuzzi was the Washington correspondent for New York Magazine. She parted ways with her old gig in October 2024 after reports of a previously undisclosed “personal relationship” with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was the subject of one of her pieces.
In an excerpt of her forthcoming book, published in Vanity Fair this week, Nuzzi wrote about a character she dubbed the “Politician,” whose description — and mention of a brain worm — bears a resemblance to that of Health and Human Services Secretary.
“I did not like to think about it just as later I would not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny. I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein,” she wrote.
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