Tag: Haley ethics investigation

Haley’s Ethics Defense

Gov. Nikki Haley’s defense for alleged ethics violations during her time as a House member became obvious this week when the House Ethics Committee voted to hold a full scale investigation.

Haley’s lawyer has said she did nothing more than other lawmakers do and to investigate Haley’s actions would bring those lawmakers’ actions into question. He said he would provide the committee with a list of lawmakers who work for lobbyists’ principals.

That’s the old ‘everybody’s doing it so it’s okay’ defense.

Haley claimed the original investigation (of which there was none) was dismissed based on fact, but the investigation has now been reopened for political reasons. Haley asked that she be left alone to “do her job”, whereupon she almost immediately left for Wisconsin to campaign for Gov. Scott Walker in his recall election.

Continue Reading →

Haley’s Ethics Problems

The ethics investigation into actions of Gov. Nikki Haley while she was a member of the House could cause the governor considerable problems with ethics laws.

In a complaint to the S .C. House of Representatives, Republican activist John Rainey alleged Haley “traded on the influence of her office (representative) for her personal benefit and the benefit of those paying her by (1) lobbying a state agency, (2) failing to disclose that her reason for recusing herself from voting on legislation was because the legislation’s beneficiary was secretly paying her, (3) failing to abstain from a vote authorizing payment of public money to a corporation paying her, (4) soliciting money from registered lobbyists and lobbyist principals for the benefit of her employer and (5) concealing all of this activity by making false and incomplete public disclosures.”

The S.C. Ethics Commission defines a lobbyist, “as any person who is employed, appointed, or retained, with or without compensation, by another person to influence by direct communication with public officials or public employees.”

Continue Reading →

Harrell Responds to Haley Accusations

The fight over alleged ethics violations by Gov. Nikki Haley when she served as a member of the House is being heard far and wide from Columbia.

The governor claimed House Speaker Bobby Harrell was interfering with the House Ethics Committee investigation, which could be an ethics violation in itself. Harrell responded to those charges yesterday.

“Statements made by Governor Haley today at a press conference are simply not true.”

“It is not true to claim that lawyers for the House Ethics Committee were ‘directed’ to refuse to meet with the Governor’s lawyers in order to accept the documents the Committee requested. The truth is, the Governor’s lawyers did in fact present those documents directly to counsel for the Ethics Committee…”

Continue Reading →