Perhaps not since Michael Douglas’ self-serving character in “Fatal Attraction” has a cheating husband tried so hard to convince others — and seemingly his wife — that he deserves sympathy for being the object of a woman’s alleged sexual obsession.
But that’s what surrogates of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are trying to do for the married, 70-year-old former presidential candidate, who has embroiled himself in yet another sex scandal — this time over his alleged inappropriate, “sexting” relationship with star political reporter Olivia Nuzzi.
Kennedy’s friends told the New York Post over the weekend that the 31-year-old Nuzzi was “obsessed” with the Trump-supporting Kennedy family member, who is married to his third wife, TV actor Cheryl Hines. Nuzzi tried to “set (Kennedy) up” by repeatedly sending him pornographic photographs of herself, even after her number had been blocked.
Reporter Olivia Nuzzi arrives for the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, April 29, 2023. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds / AFP) (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
“She went after him aggressively,” a source told the New York Post. “She targeted him pretty hard. Bobby was blocking her continually. It was a little scary. She was obsessed with him. I think she still is.”
Another friend, journalist Jessica Reed Kraus, wrote on Substack that Kennedy only met Nuzzi once, when she visited his Los Angeles-area home and went on a hike with him for a profile that was published in New York magazine in November 2023. Puck News reported that the two began “sexting” with Nuzzi sending Kennedy “demure” nude photographs.
But Kraus said that Kennedy blocked Nuzzi two weeks after the profile was published because she allegedly made “a flirtatious remark” to him in a text message. Over the next eight months, Kennedy kept her blocked, except for a few occasions, Kraus said.
“Once unblocked, she bombarded him with increasingly pornographic photos and videos that he found difficult to resist,” Kraus wrote. “After brief exchanges, he would block her again.”
“This had nothing to do with romance,” Gavin de Becker, a security expert hired by Kennedy to deal with the Nuzzi situation, told Kraus. “He was being chased by porn.”
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 25: Actress Cheryl Hines (R) and her husband, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., greet supporters during a campaign event to announce his pick for running mate at the Henry J. Kaiser Event Center on March 26, 2024 in Oakland, California. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Silicon Valley attorney Nicole Shanahan as his running mate. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Nuzzi has vehemently pushed back on the idea that she made Kennedy the victim in a “Fatal Attraction” scenario — in which she’s the “obsessed” other woman who is relentlessly stalking the environmental lawyer-turned-anti-vaccine campaigner, as the New York Post reported. People close to Nuzzi deny that she single-handedly instigated their “digital relationship,” though they acknowledged that the relationship could, at times, be tumultuous.
“It’s absolutely untrue that she was the aggressor, but both parties were aware of how high pressure and high risk the circumstances were and for that reason their communication was very on and off,” a person with knowledge of the situation told the Post.
“Olivia’s point of view is that to call this a relationship or affair is completely inaccurate. It was at most a flirtation,” another source close to Nuzzi said.
Meanwhile, Kennedy’s wronged wife spent part of the weekend letting the world think that she wasn’t bothered by last week’s revelations that her husband of 10 years had engaged in a “personal relationship” with a reporter who was covering the 2024 presidential race.
Hines was seen celebrating her 59th birthday during Milan Fashion Week, with social media images showing her and her daughter, Catherine Young, in the audience at the Gucci show, People magazine reported. Notably, Kennedy’s daughter, Kyra Kennedy, walked the runway in the show.
But the Daily Mail also reported that the Curb Your Enthusiasm” actor was photographed in Milan not wearing her wedding ring. Meanwhile other reports quoted her friends, who said they had warned her about becoming Kennedy’s third wife, given his reputation as a womanizer and his controversial views, the Daily Beast said.
Kennedy also allegedly kept a sex diary in 2001 in which which he chronicled his affairs with dozens of other women while married to his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, as the New York Post originally reported in 2013.
NEW YORK – APRIL 19: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mary Richardson Kennedy arrives at the 11th Annual Riverkeeper Benefit Gala on April 19, 2007 in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images)
Kennedy’s latest scandal — following a lifetime of scandals that include the sex diary, his anti-vaccine beliefs, his brain-worm infection and his recent boast about dumping a bear-cub corpse in Central Park — broke last Thursday when his alleged “personal relationship” with Nuzzi made headlines after New York magazine shared a note to readers revealing that it put her on leave.
The magazine’s note stated that Nuzzi was placed on leave after she “engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign,” with a source confirming to CNN that Nuzzi’s “personal relationship” involved Kennedy.
The note also said that the relationship was “a violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures” and, if the magazine had been aware of it, Nuzzi “would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign.”
Nuzzi shared a statement of her own to the media, confirming that “the nature of some communication” between herself and “a former reporting subject turned personal.” But she added that she “did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source” during that period.
“The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict,” she stated. “I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”
But now Nuzzi isn’t just a reporter under fire for violating professional ethics, she’s also facing possible civil litigation from Kennedy, according to Kraus. Meanwhile, Kraus and other Kennedy sources are essentially trying to equate her to Glenn Close’s deranged, bunny-boiling Alex Forrest in “Fatal Attraction.”
But Daily Beast writer Lily Mae Lazarus took issue with this portrait of an obsessed Nuzzi and a beleaguered Kennedy. She said the statements about his seeming inability to resist seduction by Nuzzi’s “pornographic” photos mirrored the self-victimizing rhetoric he adopted in his alleged sex diary.
In the thick, red journal obtained by the New York Post, the son of Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of John F. Kennedy kept track of his sexual encounters while he was in his seventh year of marriage to Mary Richardson Kennedy, the mother of four of his six children. Kennedy recently denied to the New York Post that he kept such a diary.
But the Post said the diary was found by Mary Richardson Kennedy sometime before her death. Vanity Fair also reported in July that, during the marriage, Kennedy was known to text nude photos of women to his friends, and his friends assume that Kennedy took the photos himself.
In his diary, Kennedy would award each woman he bedded with a number between 1 to 10, referring to sexual acts. The number “10” meant he and the woman had intercourse.
But in the diary, Kennedy also painted himself as the victim of seductresses, the Daily Beast’s Lazarus said. He used term “mugged” if he felt he had been seduced and was, in his view of things, an innocent, unwilling participant.
“I narrowly escaped being mugged by a double team of (two women),” he wrote in one entry, the New York Post reported. “It was tempting but I prayed and God gave me the strength to say no.”
Kennedy would celebrate a “victory” if he didn’t succumb to the temptations of women, or if he got through a day without any sexual temptation, as a source close to Richardson told the New York Post in 2013.
Kennedy’s diary ended up in the hands of the New York Post after Richardson died by suicide in 2012. She and Kennedy separated in 2010 and she was distraught over her husband’s serial philandering and impending divorce before her death, the New York Post said.