In Friday's installment of "I did have sexual relations with that woman" -- allegedly, that is -- South Carolina blogger Will Folks released a series of phone records showing lengthy, late-night conversations between him and South Carolina gubernatorial hopeful, Nikki Haley.
The large batch of phone records amounts to more than 700 calls placed over the past three years -- more than 1,000 pages of records, Folks says -- many of which came in the form of long exchanges in middle of nights in 2007, the year that Folks worked on Haley's campaign and the year that he alleges they engaged in an "inappropriate physical relationship." One such call began at 2:24 AM and ended 146 minutes later.
Nikki Haley's campaign addressed the matter shortly after the release, acknowledging the large quantity of calls but maintaining that they provided no concrete evidence of Folks's claim.
"This is getting ridiculous," Tim Pearson, Haley's campaign manager, said in a statement. "A blogger drops a thousand pages of phone records unearthing the mind-blowing revelation that he and Nikki Haley spoke on the phone. Of course they spoke on the phone. It is no secret Will Folks worked for Nikki -- she happens to be one of the few people willing to disclose her association with him. Nikki has forthrightly and repeatedly denied the false allegations against her, and at some point this nonsense has to stop."
When asked if she planned to release her own documentation of these contacts, Haley herself said no.
"I am not wasting any energy on this -- none," Haley told The Post and Courier. "If y'all have asked for them, I don't know about that yet. But I can tell you this right now: I am not wasting any energy on this. It is not worth the time and money of the people of this of state, and it's not worth the time and energy to get distracted off of this campaign."
On Folks's blog, he chooses to provide a sampling of the calls placed later at night, the ones that he maintains are "raising eyebrows across the state." Here are the phone records from August, the month when the late calls appeared most frequently and most lengthy:
8/7/07 - 10:19 PM - 180 minutes - incoming
8/9/07 - 10:47 PM - 79 minutes - incoming
8/20/07 - 9:58 PM - 73 minutes - incoming
8/25/07 - 2:24 AM - 146 minutes - incoming
8/26/07 - 9:53 PM - 63 minutes - outgoing
8/27/07 - 9:59 PM - 72 minutes - outgoing
8/27/07 - 11:12 PM - 2 minutes - outgoing
8/27/07 - 11:13 PM - 20 minutes - incoming
8/28/07 - 10:05 PM - 40 minutes - incoming
8/30/07 - 9:28 PM - 133 minutes - incoming