{"id":43326,"date":"2025-11-18T05:37:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T05:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/43326\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T05:37:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T05:37:09","slug":"ryan-lizza-claims-olivia-nuzzi-cheated-on-him-with-mark-sanford-in-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/43326\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Lizza claims Olivia Nuzzi cheated on him with Mark Sanford in 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disgraced political reporter Olivia Nuzzi \u2014 who is set to release a tell-all book on her \u201csexting\u201d affair with\u00a0Robert F. Kennedy Jr. <\/a>\u2014 was accused by her ex-fianc\u00e9 Ryan Lizza Monday of sleeping with former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford in 2020 while the pair of journalists were dating.<\/p>\n

Lizza claimed he uncovered a secret love letter on hotel stationery that proved his then-live-in girlfriend had been cheating on him with Sanford \u2014 infamous for his own extramarital affair \u2014 during his 2020 presidential campaign in a Monday newsletter post titled \u201cPart 1: How I Found Out\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n

The ex-Politico writer who ended his engagement to Nuzzi after it was revealed she was involved in a \u201csexting\u201d relationship with <\/a>Kennedy wrote that the discovery came when his sweetheart returned from what she told him was a reporting trip, leaving her Herschel backpack tipped over beside the bed.<\/p>\n

In the pile of notepads and papers, he found a page that stopped him cold, according to the entry in his Telos News newsletter.<\/p>\n

Ryan Lizza, the political journalist and former Politico reporter, has alleged that his then-girlfriend Olivia Nuzzi cheated on him with GOP presidential candidate Mark Sanford. Bryan Dozier\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house, I would still thirst for you,\u201d she had written in a note dated March 5, 2020, according to Lizza. Their home, he noted, had no water tower.<\/p>\n

He wrote that another page named the recipient of the letter as \u201cMark,\u201d which he said confirmed what he feared: an alleged physical relationship with Sanford, a presidential candidate she had profiled months earlier.<\/p>\n

By early 2020, the pair had signed a contract to write a book on the presidential race. Nuzzi was spending \u201cmore and more time in South Carolina,\u201d which Lizza believed was for reporting.<\/p>\n

Instead, the scorned ex now claims she \u201csecretly followed him on the campaign trail\u201d to pursue Sanford, allegedly sending him explicit photos and messages while telling Lizza she was \u201cdealing with a crisis concerning her sick mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nuzzi is a former New York Magazine correspondent who left the publication after it was revealed she had been engaged in a \u201csexting\u201d relationship with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.<\/p>\n

He says she admitted the relationship intensified, ultimately leading to a sexual encounter at Sanford\u2019s home the night she went dark and stopped answering messages, Lizza claimed. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow could we write a book about the presidential campaign if Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of the candidates?\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Days later, Lizza wrote that he phoned his agent and delivered the news.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a big problem,\u201d he recalled telling him. \u201cOlivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lizza says Nuzzi later told him she had become \u201cinfatuated\u201d with Sanford after their interview and couldn\u2019t shake him from her mind.<\/p>\n

He wrote that she described sending explicit photos and messages as the obsession grew, and that she followed the candidate on the trail while claiming she was reporting on others.<\/p>\n

Lizza claimed he had been \u201cused to cleaning up Olivia\u2019s messes,\u201d including what he describes as her earlier entanglement with MSNBC\u2019s former host Keith Olbermann.<\/p>\n

Lizza has alleged that Nuzzi slept with former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford while covering him during the 2020 presidential campaign. Getty Images<\/p>\n

According to Lizza, Nuzzi fled her New Jersey home to live with the much older anchor.<\/p>\n

Lizza wrote that Olbermann provided her with luxury clothes, jewelry and housing before she eventually confided the relationship to him and sought his help to leave it.<\/p>\n

Lizza claimed that Olbermann even paid Nuzzi\u2019s college tuition while she attended Fordham University.<\/p>\n

Lizza has also alleged that Nuzzi \u201cconsummated\u201d her relationship with Sanford while she claimed she was tending to her sick mother. Getty Images for Nuclear Now<\/p>\n

Lizza\u2019s romance with Nuzzi ended after it was learned that she was having a sexting affair with Kennedy while she covered his presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

In her forthcoming memoir, she wrote that Kennedy told her \u201cI love you,\u201d called her \u201cLivvy\u201d and said he would \u201ctake a bullet\u201d for her.<\/a><\/p>\n

Kennedy is also reported to have tried to calm her anxiety<\/a> about an alleged brain worm with \u201cBaby, don\u2019t worry\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s not a worm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nuzzi\u2019s sexting affair with Kennedy detonated her career, leading to her exit from New York Magazine and a year of public silence before resurfacing with a memoir and a new role at Vanity Fair.<\/p>\n

Lizza\u2019s romance with Nuzzi ended after it was learned that she was having a sexting affair with Kennedy while she covered his presidential campaign. Bonnie Cash\/UPI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The scandal also blew apart her relationship with Lizza, who said she made false and defamatory allegations against him while she briefly sought \u2014 and later withdrew \u2014 a protective order accusing him of harassment and blackmail.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Sanford\u2019s political career has long been defined by his extramarital affair<\/a> with Argentine journalist Maria Bel\u00e9n Chapur<\/a>, which he initially hid by claiming he was \u201chiking on the Appalachian Trail\u201d before disappearing for six days in 2009.<\/p>\n

His personal life remained turbulent afterward, including repeated disputes with his ex-wife, a trespassing complaint and the eventual collapse of his engagement to Chapur amid ongoing custody battles.<\/p>\n

The Post has sought comment from Nuzzi, Sanford and Olbermann.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Disgraced political reporter Olivia Nuzzi \u2014 who is set to release a tell-all book on her \u201csexting\u201d affair…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5969,24861,9,11,10,24862,23690,58],"class_list":["post-43326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-2020-presidential-election","tag-mark-sanford","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-ryan-lizza","tag-scandals","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}