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“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin accused former New York Magazine journalist Olivia Nuzzi of being “unethical” on Thursday as the journalist faces new allegations of an improper romantic relationship.
Nuzzi, who has written a forthcoming book about an alleged “sexting” relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his presidential campaign, was accused this week by her ex-fiancé, Ryan Lizza, of also having a romantic relationship with former South Carolina Gov. and Rep. Mark Sanford.
“For me, it’s akin to an attorney sleeping with her client. It’s akin to a prosecutor sleeping with a witness,” Hostin said. “A shrink, a doctor sleeping with a patient. It’s unethical, it’s beneath the professional standards.”
Co-host Joy Behar added that it “undermines the work.”
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“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin criticized ex-New York Magazine journalist Olivia Nuzzi as being “unethical” in the wake of new accusations of an improper romantic relationship. (ABC/TheView; Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images for Vox Media)
“She is now the West Coast editor for Vanity Fair,” Hostin added, as Behar noted that she got the job after the scandal broke. “That, to me, undermines that position. I don’t know how you trust her as a journalist.”
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin defended Nuzzi, expressing frustration that the journalist faced backlash while Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. got off “scot-free,” she argued.
“I think the alleged RFK situation was inappropriate. I would have never engaged. I don’t think women in journalism should, but I think you can come back from one mistake. I don’t think that should ruin your entire career. What makes me nervous about the story, it sounds like there may have been other situations and I just hope, if that’s untrue, she will come forward and defend herself,” Giffin said during the discussion. “She is tremendously talented, and I think that would really help her.”
Nuzzi has not spoken out on Lizza’s allegations, which he published in a Substack on Monday.
Nuzzi did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital about Hostin’s remarks.
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Ryan Lizza and his ex-fiancé Olivia Nuzzi. ( Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Nuclear Now)
Lizza claimed that in 2020 he had found a note spilling out of Nuzzi’s backpack in the Georgetown townhouse that would “alter the course of our lives.”
“We were under contract to write a book about the presidential campaign. The primaries were in full swing, and it felt like we were falling behind on our project. But there was one bright spot. Olivia was spending more and more time in South Carolina, from where she had just returned, which was a good thing, I thought, considering how politically important the state was,” Lizza wrote.
“In the fall, she had published, in New York Magazine, a profile of a long-shot but intriguing presidential candidate, and he continued to be a helpful source,” he continued, later noting it was Sanford. “Maybe this book would come together, after all.”
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Journalist Olivia Nuzzi was accused by former fiancé Ryan Lizza of cheating on him with former South Carolina governor and Congressman Mark Sanford. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Before the book could be finished, Lizza said he found a note his then-fiancée wrote that read, “If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house, I would still thirst for you.”
Lizza wrote that he saw a name and the first line of an unfinished love letter, which he said had enough information for him to deduce that there was a physical relationship between them and some sort of falling out.
He described the note as a love letter addressed to “a famous politician, 32 years older than Olivia, and well-known for a sex scandal,” identifying the recipient as Sanford.
“She later explained to me that she became ‘infatuated’ with him after their interview, that she couldn’t get him out of her head, and that as her obsession intensified, she sent him increasingly risqué pictures and texts, secretly followed him on the campaign trail when she told me she was out covering other candidates, and fantasized about a rendezvous, which was consummated at his home in South Carolina one night after she went dark on me and made up a story about how she was dealing with a crisis concerning her sick mother,” Lizza wrote.
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Fox News’ Brian Flood contributed to this report.