If a report at the DailyMail.com is true, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley hasn’t treated her husband and marriage as if they were sacred cows.
The website dredged up confessions from a lobbyist and a campaign consultant that they shared more than political advice with the former South Carolina governor. And top South Carolina GOP sources close to Haley, then a state representative, backed up the claims.
A fuming campaign then booted a website reporter out of a campaign event in all-important New Hampshire and banned the website from future events.
Canoodles in the Caddy
“New witnesses have come forward telling DailyMail.com that Haley’s denials of two alleged 2008 affairs are false, and that the supposed trysts were brazen and widely known among South Carolina politicos,” the Daily Mail reported today:
Will Folks, 49, and Larry Marchant, 61, both signed affidavits in 2010 alleging they had a sexual relationship with the then-South Carolina lawmaker, before she went on to become governor.
While the contents of the affidavits were described by major news outlets at the time, this is the first time they have been published outside of Folks’ own document which he published on his blog.
Haley denied the affairs and said she was “100% faithful” to husband Michael, then serving in Afghanistan.
GOP “insiders,” however, now say they knew about Haleys’ infidelity. They spoke to the website “after noticing her rosy references to her relationship with her husband, a major in the National Guard who is currently deployed in Africa, on her presidential campaign trail,” the Mail continued:
“I’m doing this for my husband and his military brothers and sisters. They need to know their sacrifice matters,” she said in a speech reported by CBS News in December.
Her most recent campaign ad opens with photographs of Michael’s 2013 homecoming from his first deployment to Afghanistan.
But in two notarized affidavits they signed in 2010, Folks and Marchant confessed to affairs with Haley.
Folks said his first liaison with Haley was in the back seat of her Cadillac SUV in 2007, when they kissed after “an evening with friends at the nearby Liberty Taproom.”
“Rep. Haley drove us to the parking lot behind the neighborhood center at Emily Douglas Park where we parked for approximately forty-five minutes,” he confessed. “There we slid back the seats of her Cadillac SUV so that Rep. Haley could climb on top of me.”
Folks said that he and Haley went out in public myriad times, and that the adultery continued until Folks married in 2008. His wife, the affidavit says, once intercepted a message from Haley when Folks was in the shower. “This is Katrina,” she icily replied. “Keep it business only.”
Marchant wrinkled the sheets with Haley at the Salt Lake Marriott Downtown in 2008, he admitted:
After a night together of dinner and drinks with other participants of the conference, Rep. Haley and I returned to the hotel together. We went back to her room where we had sexual intercourse and I spent the remainder of the evening. I left her room at approximately 6:00 am.”
I came forward publicly on this matter only after being contacted by the press and after hearing Rep. Haley claim that she had been One Hundred Percent faithful to her husband in response to the Folk’s allegations when I knew her statements were absolutely false.
Marchant was also married, the Mail reported, and his wife cited the affair in their 2013 divorce.
Everyone Knew
But GOP sources close to Haley told the website that everyone knew about Haley’s lubricious larks.
“She was in [Marchant’s] office all the time, she’d be there at 11 or midnight, the two of them would be drinking,” the source divulged. He claimed he saw Haley hop into the back seat of the Caddy with Folks. “I saw them sitting in it a few times with the windows steamed up.”
Another top GOP source saw the Caddy parked “outside Folks’s duplex in Columbia” for what appeared to be overnight stays:
“I became curious when I saw an SUV parked outside early in the morning and late at night. It had legislative tags, it wasn’t hard to figure out whose it was,” he said.
Nor were Haley’s extracurricular sex romps a secret, the sources said: “A lot of people saw her sitting on laps, wrapped arm in arm. I saw her myself when she was sitting on Larry’s lap.”
A yet a third source, an “ex-staffer,” explained Haley’s adultery this way:
“When she was having the affairs, she and her husband were having a lot of problems and were on the verge of divorce,” the ex-staffer said.
“There’s no question she and Will were having an affair.
“Will was not sober at the time. They liked to drink at Za’s and Momo’s in Columbia. Nikki was a big wine drinker. They would sit and canoodle. It was totally out in the open, everyone in SC politics knew about it.
“I saw [Haley and Marchant] together many times.”
Another source said Folks confessed the affair.
When the affair with Folks went public, he confessed at his website. But Haley still “categorically” denied and said she was “100% faithful to my husband throughout our 13 years of marriage.”
Folks then set about proving that the affair was well known, the website reported:
Folks, who had been a public supporter of her gubernatorial campaign, then posted text messages on his blog that purported to show others knew of the alleged affair.
Shortly thereafter, Marchant confessed his one-nighter with Haley.
Bye-Bye Daily Mail
The Mail offered more details, not that they were necessary to invite the campaign’s fury.
This morning, the campaign kicked out the reporter at the campaign event and banned the website in the future, it reported.
A Haley spokesman woman told a website editor that its reporters were “banned for ‘printing lies.’”
Later, the campaign offered another excuse by email:
Shortly after the event, DailyMail.com’s reporter was told the application for credentials for a rally in Manchester on Friday night had been rejected.
“We apologize, but due to high volume of interest and limited space we CANNOT credential you for tonight’s event in Manchester, NH. Please do not attempt to attend, as you will be turned away at the door.”
