Nikki Haley releases her house emails

South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley released the emails from her House of Representatives account, nearly three months after members of the news media requested them.

She says part of the reason for the delay was that she was focused on a tough primary campaign and runoff.

“When we got past the runoff, we wanted to go ahead and give what had been asked," she told reporters going through the emails. "And so we turned around, we gave those emails. We did it in as quick of a time as we could but, in all honesty, to go through 10,000 sheets of paper and protect and take out email addresses and names so that we weren’t putting anybody in privacy rights issues, it takes a long time.”

The media did not get copies of the emails and were not allowed to shoot video or photos of any of them. Reporters were able to look at the emails and take notes.

The media requested the emails after blogger Will Folks claimed to have had "an inappropriate physical relationship" with Haley, who's married. Haley has denied the allegations.

Folks said after making the claim that text messages and emails would help confirm his allegation. However, he says on his blog that he and Haley rarely sent messages to each other using her House email account, they used her personal account, so he was not expecting this release to reveal anything. Also, he says the relationship took place in 2007, but House emails are kept only 180 days.

None of the emails Haley released back up Folks' allegation.

Democratic nominee Vincent Sheheen released his emails August 2.

Sheheen campaign manager Trav Robertson said in a written release, "Representative Haley did not release all of her emails today. She did not release her L drive emails. The Freedom of Information deadline was August 2nd, but she delayed weeks and many of the emails have been deleted. What did those emails say and why weren't they released? If Representative Haley really believed in transparency, she would have never have dropped these right before the weekend, which is a classic trick by politicians to hide bad news. What does Representative Haley have to hide?"

The "L drive" he's referring to is the hard drive on Haley's House computer. She confirms she released emails from the "G drive", or network drive, shared by all House members.

“I am very happy to have given you everything that the House gave to me," Haley said. "I’m very comfortable with how transparent we’ve been.”

But when voter Debbie Dellera heard that reporters weren't allowed to make copies or shoot video of the emails, she didn't think that sounded like transparency.

"No, it isn't, I mean, if you don't have time really to review it and look over it carefully," she said. "What do you have to hide?"

University of South Carolina political scientist Robert Oldendick thinks the release will be a minor issue in the campaign. He's not accusing Haley's campaign of deleting any emails, but says it's troubling that it took so long to release them.

"It's not being released as it happened," he says. "There's this opportunity to go through that information. I think that that's not fully transparent, anyway."