WASHINGTON — It was March 2020 when veteran journalist Ryan Lizza discovered an apology word in his DC house that wasn’t meant for him.
His live-in girlfriend, Olivia Nuzzi, had penned a letter on lodge stationery, and it was spilling out of her backpack on the ground of their three-story townhouse in Georgetown.
“Mark, I’m sorry. I can’t say that I want I hadn’t touched you, hadn’t,” the unfinished, deserted handwritten letter dated March 5, 2020, obtained by The Put up learn.
The Mark, on this case, was former 2020 GOP presidential hopeful Mark Sanford, Lizza has publicly alleged. The aborted letter was considered one of three draft notes Lizza discovered handwritten by Nuzzi, a fellow journalist.
The word, penned on a Kimpton Accommodations word pad from a reporting journey, is early proof that Nuzzi crossed journalistic boundaries by having sexual relationships with sources, Lizza defined in his tell-all sequence on Nuzzi.
The wild personal lives of each Nuzzi and Lizza, as soon as a Washington energy couple, have been on full show in latest days. Nuzzi launched a e-book, “American Canto” on her alleged digital affair with one other presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whereas her former lover, Lizza, launched an internet sequence to reveal a sample of Nuzzi’s alleged sexual encounters with well-known males.
“My coronary heart stopped once I realized who he was,” Lizza recalled in his Telos piece final month of the Sanford notes. “He was a presidential candidate, a supply, and the topic of Olivia’s latest profile for New York [Magazine].”
“…I known as my agent. ‘We’ve an enormous downside,’ I stated. ‘Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford,’” Lizza concluded in a dramatic cliff-hanger to his Half 1 kickoff tell-all sequence piece on Nuzzi.
Whereas the word didn’t point out Sanford by identify, Lizza was capable of put the items collectively, figuring out that she had been “spending increasingly time in South Carolina,” and in the end, he acquired the reality out of her.
Nuzzi later fessed as much as changing into “infatuated” with Sanford after their interview and had despatched him “risqué photos and texts” whereas quietly following him round on the marketing campaign path, based on Lizza’s telling.
The tryst included some rumpy-pumpy at his South Carolina house when Nuzzi allegedly “went darkish” on Lizza and tried to hide it by making up a “story about how she was coping with a disaster regarding her sick mom,” per the Telos piece.
“Olivia insisted that she and Mark solely had intercourse one time, on the night time of February 24, 2020, after she arrived at his house at about 7 PM,” Lizza defined in Half 2 of his tell-all sequence piece on Nuzzi.
“Throughout their encounter, he was paranoid that she was taping him, so she briefly turned her telephone’s recorder on and off to indicate him the way it labored, abandoning a brief voice memo of the 2 of them guffawing. She left his home round 11 PM.”
Lizza stated he was used to “clearing up Olivia’s messes,” and regardless of her alleged affair with Sanford in 2020, the pair caught it out and acquired engaged in 2022 earlier than calling it off final 12 months amid their explosive falling out.
The Sanford revelation was charming partly due to his historical past. The previous governor of South Carolina from 2003 to 2011 was infamously caught having an affair throughout a June 2009 disappearance.
His alibi was that he was climbing the Appalachian Path. In actuality, he trekked over to Argentina to be along with his mistress. A decade later, Sanford mounted a long-shot GOP major marketing campaign in opposition to President Trump in 2020.
Satirically, Lizza claims to have touched down in South Carolina the day after Nuzzi’s alleged affair with Sanford and was oblivious to their actions the prior night time.
Round that point, Lizza reached out to Sanford to rearrange a lunch between the 2 and Nuzzi, one thing he “later realized had despatched her right into a panic.”
“She known as Mark, defined that I used to be her boyfriend, and requested him to not meet with me,” Lizza wrote in his Half 2 piece. “Amongst different issues, her recklessness detonated my relationship with an excellent supply in a key state. Mark politely instructed her to not contact him once more till she was single.”
Sanford’s directive to Nuzzi prompted her to put in writing and re-write apology notes to him on the Kimpton Resort word pad – later discovered by her boyfriend.
Different items of proof of the affair Lizza cited had been a voice memo and a draft, “tabloid-style information story” Nuzzi concocted about her romance with Sanford to map out the worst-case situation of their affair changing into recognized.
Lizza described the fallout as “devastating” and harassed the way it compelled the 2 to shelve considered one of their e-book initiatives. They later scrapped one other e-book challenge in 2024, the identical 12 months her alleged affair with Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got here to gentle.
“She had crossed a journalistic purple line. How might we write a e-book concerning the presidential marketing campaign if Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of many candidates?” Lizza recalled considering after discovering the aborted word to Sanford.
The Put up made a number of makes an attempt to name a press quantity for Sanford and despatched an e-mail. The Put up additionally reached out to Nuzzi and her reps for remark.
