On Monday morning, Ryan Lizza announced that he had left Politico and was launching his own Substack. “The main reason,” he claimed, was that Politico’s “style of political coverage is not meeting the unprecedented moment of democratic political peril we are facing.” It was the first time in ages that readers had heard from Lizza, who has essentially gone to ground since the emergence of his ex-fiancée Olivia Nuzzi’s “demure nudes” sexting scandal with R.F.K. Jr. Ryan’s feeble attempt to launch an independent journalism career with a Bari Weiss–style protest resignation was very du jour. He is not the first suddenly self-employed journalist to try to rustle up some subscription revenue by torching his or her former employer, or the mainstream media writ large. But it is most certainly not the main reason he left. After the R.F.K. Jr. scandal broke last fall, Politico placed Ryan on temporary leave, relieving him of co-author duties on Playbook, the company’s flagship morning tipsheet. Olivia subsequently accused Ryan of using the R.F.K. sexts to harass and blackmail her, and tried to take out a temporary restraining order against him, which she later withdrew. Ryan then accused her of being a serial liar who had “shamelessly used litigation with false and defamatory allegations as a public relations strategy.” Ugly stuff. By that point, Politico editor-in-chief John Harris and executive vice president Jonathan Greenberger had already begun rethinking their strategy for Playbook and eyeing new authors. And yet, rather than use the scandal as an opportunity to sever ties with Lizza immediately, as many in the newsroom expected, they instead gave him a short-term sinecure. In January, Ryan was moved to Politico magazine and told he had three months to find his next gig. Ryan, once a gifted writer, would continue to be paid—handsomely, by industry standards—and could write as much, or as little, as he wished while determining his next career move. (As Politicos know, Harris has a soft spot for his employees and tends to grant a lot of third and fourth chances, which can often be a drag on the organization.) In the ideal scenario, Ryan would find a new job and leave with some dignity intact, while in the meantime producing a little more journalism that would be commensurate with his salary and allow him to move past the cloud of the Olivia drama. Alas, Ryan didn’t write anything for the magazine, and he didn’t find another job—or, at least, not one that he wanted. Instead, he decided to bite the hand that had fed him in the name of fearless journalism. (Ryan did not respond to requests to discuss his relationship with Politico.) In the inaugural post on his new Substack, Telos, Ryan averred that Politico wasn’t up to the challenge of the moment—a faux epiphany that had prompted him to strike out on his own. “The gap between what is actually happening in Washington and how it was being framed and reported became much too wide,” he wrote. “This new publication, Telos, is my modest attempt to do things better.” Ryan’s first foray in that effort centered on how the law firm Paul Weiss had scrubbed praise for partner Jeannie Rhee from its website, seemingly in response to pressure from the Trump administration. “One of the leading law firms in America deleted entire chapters of its own history, erased the accomplishments of its top partners, and rewrote its own stated core values to appease the federal government. That is some 1984-level shit,” Ryan wrote. “It shook me. And there is no way to capture that when writing for a place such as Politico.” Presumably, Ryan could have written an article for Politico about the web edits at Paul Weiss, but we’ll never know because he never pitched the idea to the editors. Instead, he decided to put Politico on blast as part of his own fundraising effort, chastising his former employer for sending a reporter to appear at CPAC, the conservative summit, after the Trump administration canceled federal government subscriptions to Politico. Telos, by contrast, would remain mission-oriented. “I originally considered raising money for this venture, but after the first conversation with a wealthy funder, I realized I would be recreating some of the same problems I was trying to fix in the current corporate media landscape,” Ryan explained. “So this effort will be 100% funded by Telos readers—you.”

Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. For all his noble principles, Ryan was informed repeatedly by a Politico lawyer that, by trash-talking Politico, he had violated his nondisparagement agreement and needed to delete the post. (Ryan did indeed sign an NDA, which typically secures a larger payout.) Instead, Ryan parlayed this into yet another business-building opportunity: In a new post, Ryan recounted the lawyer’s entreaties and framed them as an attempt “to censor critical reporting about Politico,” as well as “critical reporting about Trump.” In his telling, “Politico, regrettably, was doing the bidding of the Trump administration by using a legal threat to assist the White House in stifling criticism of the president.” Heavy cake. On Wednesday, Ryan published another response to Politico—or, as he put it, “the media conglomerate trying to censor me.” As of this writing, he is waiting on Politico to specify what aspects of his initial post qualify as disparagement, or otherwise withdraw the takedown request and apologize. With the exception of the initial Paul Weiss revelation and video conversations with guests Steve Schmidt and Don Lemon, Ryan’s beef with Politico now accounts for Telos’s entire content offering, all of which can be accessed for $7 a month. Meanwhile, Ryan’s author page has been scrubbed from Politico’s website, though articles about Lizza—ranging from his W.H.C.A. award for journalistic excellence, in 2013, to his termination from The New Yorker for improper sexual conduct four years later—remain. A coda: Before their split, Ryan and Olivia had a longstanding, seven-figure deal with Simon & Schuster to co-author a book about the presidential campaign—the 2020 campaign, initially, and then the 2024 campaign, a delay that Ryan attributed in court to Olivia’s infidelity. In their legal fight last fall, Ryan confirmed that he had asked Nuzzi to assume financial responsibility for the contract (she claimed he threatened her with physical violence if she didn’t, a charge he denied). In any case, Ryan is no longer attached to that project, but I’m told on good authority that New York magazine’s former star political reporter still intends to write a book.