The Scoop
The man in the middle of 2025’s most lurid political-media storm seems intent on riding it out in silence.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is at the center of a series of public allegations by Washington journalist Ryan Lizza about his former fiancée Olivia Nuzzi, whose new book details what she describes as an obsessive and sexual (but never physical) relationship with an unnamed politician.
Kennedy has taken some unfriendly fire along the way from Lizza. The journalist alleges that Nuzzi told him, among other things: that Kennedy was using ketamine in 2024; that Kennedy believed his phone had been hacked during his presidential campaign; and that Kennedy was at some point made aware of an operation Nuzzi orchestrated to secretly record now-President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Kennedy denied the digital affair with Nuzzi when it was first reported more than a year ago. But while the spectacle of two prominent journalists dissecting their romantic lives with a Cabinet secretary caught in the middle has captured the attention of Trump administration aides and reporters in Washington, Kennedy is staying quiet.
“This is solely about book sales and revenge — book sales for her and revenge for him, and there’s zero upside in engaging here,” one person familiar with the dynamic told Semafor of Nuzzi and Lizza. “Bobby and [wife] Cheryl [Hines] and the administration moved on from this a year ago.”
An HHS spokesperson declined to comment on the Kennedy-related allegations made by Lizza. The White House did not return a request for comment on Lizza’s allegations of the secret recordings made at Mar-a-Lago.
