One night in early August 2024, before I knew anything, Olivia Nuzzi became obsessed with obtaining an advance copy of an article that The New Yorker was set to publish the following day. Olivia was desperate to get a preview of a profile of Bobby Kennedy Jr. by Clare Malone, a political reporter whom Olivia viewed as a competitor.

The piece included a killer anecdote, one of the most memorable of the presidential campaign, and which would come to define Bobby’s image for much of the public: A decade earlier, he had left the carcass of a black-bear cub in Central Park as some kind of twisted prank.

This was precisely the sort of story that Olivia relished, a Twin Peaks-like tale that illuminated the darker parts of a candidate’s mind. Olivia had written one of the earliest profiles of Bobby, so I figured her fixation on getting The New Yorker piece was also about professional jealousy. Bobby was her subject. Now she had missed a major scoop about the candidate whom, behind the scenes and without much explanation, she insisted would be the next president.

What I didn’t know at the time was that she was secretly working to help make Bobby the next president.

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She sent Izzy in with a recorder hidden in her bag. As Izzy sketched Trump, the recorder captured the
atmosphere—Trump meeting with Matt Gaetz, Susie Wiles, and others. Olivia hoped to gather material
for her article and intel for Bobby as he negotiated his endorsement.

According to Olivia, when Izzy left, she was rattled by something Trump may have said about Butler,
Pennsylvania—something explosive that, if true, would upend much of what we think we know.