Ryan Lizza Says Politico Hit Him With a Cease and Desist Over Substack Criticizing Trump Coverage

Former politico reporter Ryan Lizza said Tuesday that lawyers for his previous employer sent him a cease and desist order in response to comments he made about the outlet’s coverage of Donald Trump, and have ordered him to take down not just those comments but the entire article in which they appeared.

Lizza, who for 6 years was Politico’s Chief Washington Correspondent as well as co-author of its “The Playbook” newsletter, revealed Monday that he was no longer affiliated the with website in an essay announcing the launch of his new Substack newsletter, Telos.

Lizza hadn’t actually written for Politico for nearly 6 months by that point, having gone on leave after becoming collateral damage in his ex-fiancee Olivia Nuzzi’s ethical scandal over her affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

But in his debut Telos post, Lizza said the “main reason” he left Politico was because “their style of political coverage is not meeting the unprecedented moment of democratic peril we are facing.”

As part of a larger argument that major media is failing in how it covers the things, Lizza also wrote, “I saw up close how easy it was for a media conglomerate to grovel before the Trump administration when the wrong people are in charge.”

Lizza also criticized the outlet for allowing one of its reporters to participate in the Conservative Political Action Conference, which he described as a “regrettable mistake,” and alleged it was an attempt to make nice with Trump.

Politico objected to this and, Lizza wrote on Tuesday, is accusing him of violating a non-disparagement clause in the agreement he signed when he left. The company is also demanding he take down the article in its entirety.

Lizza for his part refuses to do so, and in his defense argues he didn’t actually disparage Politico. “Writing that ‘Politico made a regrettable mistake’ is the definition of respectful criticism. Far from being of little worth, I believe Politico is important—and I also believe there’s a lot of room for improvement and I’m not going to be censored or intimidated by legal threats.”

“I’m holding out the possibility that the letter was sent to me in a moment of pique by an otherwise well-meaning Politico attorney before the editorial staffers—many of whom I know would be appalled by this kind of a request—were informed,” Lizza also wrote. “I hope cooler heads prevail here, and I hope that my friends at Politico will think carefully about whether they really want to go around censoring journalists.”

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