At this point I half-hope that all these charges against her are true, just because that’d actually be less depressing than the thought of this many lying scumbags running around South Carolina smearing innocent people.

The allegation made Wednesday by lobbyist Larry Marchant is the second leveled at Republican state Rep. Nikki Haley in the past two weeks. Her campaign vehemently denies both allegations.

Neither claim has come with proof.

Marchant says their one-night stand happened in 2008 during a trip to Utah. He was married then and still is.

Funny coincidence one: The author of that AP story is Jim Davenport, the same reporter who showed up in Will Folks’s archive of text messages sniffing around for dirt on Haley. Funny coincidence two: Marchant resigned earlier today from his position as a consultant to … Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who also happens to be the guy Erick Erickson suspects of coordinating with Folks to take down Haley before the gubernatorial primary. And now a question: Assuming that Bauer knew what Marchant was planning to say, and in light of the fact that Bauer declined to press Haley about the affair allegations at last night’s debate, why didn’t he refuse Marchant’s resignation and tell him to keep his fat mouth shut instead? Does anyone not think Bauer’s fingerprints are all over this?

Here’s Haley’s new ad, aimed squarely at Folks’s charges against her. Contain your surprise upon learning that he’s now looking to cash in with a book deal.

Update: More from Davenport. Haley’s denying the new accusation, of course, and with good reason. Here’s Marchant’s ridiculous explanation for why he had to come clean:

“I did not have any intention of going public,” Marchant said Wednesday. “I kept getting calls from different people. I just felt like I owed Andre to disclose it to him. I did not do it until two days after I disclosed it to my wife.”…

Marchant said Bauer asked for his resignation after a newspaper reporter began asking questions about the alleged tryst this week. Bauer declined to comment about it, but his campaign did take the unusual step of announcing the resignation for “inappropriate conduct not in keeping with the goals of this campaign.”

So instead of keeping quiet about an alleged affair of which, by his own admission, there’s zero proof, he felt duty bound to disclose it right before the primary. And Andre Bauer felt duty bound to mention in his press release that Marchant was let go for “inappropriate conduct,” which isn’t at all a signal that we should believe something really did happen between him and Haley. We’re hip-deep in filth here.