“I didn’t hide how much I interacted with him,” she told The Times. “I really don’t think I did anything wrong. I realized, too late, that maybe I should have acted more proactively earlier. But, honestly, I don’t think any harm has happened.”

Bloomberg News said it found no bias in Ms. Smith’s coverage of Mr. Shkreli.

A Bloomberg News spokesperson said that Smith’s behavior in relation to Mr. Shkreli was not in line with the expectations of the Bloomberg journalist. Mrs. Smith submitted her resignation, and we accepted it. “

Ms. Smith said she has no regrets about the way she handled the morally grave issue of covering someone she had feelings for. “In journalism school, they don’t really tell you what to do when this comes,” she said. “I just tried to get into the matter and handle things as best I could.”

She added, “I didn’t have a romantic relationship with him at that time. I didn’t sleep with him. I just took care of him. So it’s messy. How do you deal with that?”

Now, it looks like the relationship may be on hold. Ms. Smith said she last saw Mr. Shkreli in person in February, when she visited him at a Pennsylvania facility, prior to the outbreak in the United States.

She said, “We were talking that day about maybe doing something publicly, and he was in favor of that at the time.” She added that Mr. Shkreli was “astonished” afterwards when the possibility of putting it to the public became more realistic. “He suffers from some kind of PTSD about exposure to media, and it’s kind of linked to his vicious image as a kind of safe space,” Ms. Smith said.

The last time she spoke to him on the phone was in the summer and she said he was no longer responding to her emails. However, she said, she will wait for Mr Shkreli, whose release is scheduled for September 2023.

She said, “I love him.” “I’m here for him.”