Haley has already called the claim a “disgraceful smear” and “quite simply South Carolina politics at its worst.” It seems more like South Carolina politics at its most usual.

In case you’re wondering about Folks’ credibility, the Associated Press wrote a hilarious description of his blog (and 75 percent of political blogs in general):

Folks, a former Sanford spokesman, is a political consultant who now runs FITSNews.com, a conservative site that features occasionally insightful commentary, thinly sourced stories of state political intrigue and photos of women in bikinis. It refers to him as “Sic Willie,” sports the tag line “Unfair. Imbalanced,” and often promotes Haley’s campaign.

Mark Sanford is stepping aside as governor not because of his own tragic/hilarious extramarital affair, but because of term limits. His ex-wife Jenny campaigned with Haley earlier this month. Challenging Haley for the nomination: Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who says unforgivably terrible things about poor people and also might be gay. Good luck, South Carolina.

Sanford said he hoped the state could now move on from what he admitted were his own shortcomings.

“While I’ve acknowledged repeatedly my own moral failing in this matter, we feel confirmed in our consistent belief that this administration has always been a stalwart defender of the taxpayer,” Sanford said in a statement.

McMaster for months had been reviewing a probe by the State Ethics Commission that started after a series of Associated Press investigations were published about Sanford’s use of state, private and commercial planes. The state probe led to 37 charges and $74,000 in civil fines that Sanford paid in March.

The scrutiny started when Sanford disappeared last June, returning after five days to admit to an extramarital affair with an Argentine woman he later called his “soul mate.”

The Republican governor’s second and final term ends in January. A judge approved Sanford’s divorce from his wife in March.

State lawmakers used the ethics investigation as the basis for a formal rebuke of Sanford after deciding the charges didn’t merit impeachment. Lawmakers kept the door open to that if McMaster came forward with criminal accusations.

McMaster is one of four Republicans seeking to replace Sanford. The prosecutor had faced recent criticism from his three GOP opponents for the time it was taking him to release the results of his investigation.

In an interview with the AP on Thursday, McMaster shed a glimmer of light on the work his office had been doing and why it’s taken five months.

“There are facts that needed to be determined outside of the scope of what we received from the Ethics Commission,” McMaster said. “There was a lot of analysis that needs to be done.”

A spokesman for Sanford said the governor would issue a statement later Monday.

McMaster’s critics have said he should have appointed an independent prosecutor to consider the charges. But McMaster said last week his office can prosecute fairly even in cases of people it knows.

The Republican primary in the governor’s race is June 8.

——

Associated Press Writer Meg Kinnard contributed to this report.

She filed for divorce in December on the grounds of adultery, saying reconciliation efforts with her husband had been unsuccessful.

“The dissolution of a 20-year marriage is not a cause for celebration,” she said Friday.

Mark Sanford had told his staff he was going hiking along the Appalachian Trail and disappeared for five days last summer, returning to publicly confess he had been in Argentina visiting Maria Belen Chapur, his mistress for a year.

Even after the publication of passionate e-mail exchanges between her husband and Chapur, and an Associated Press interview in which Mark Sanford called Chapur his “soul mate” and admitted “crossing the line” with other women, Jenny Sanford said she was willing to reconcile with the two-term governor.

The first lady said she had learned about the affair in January 2008, when she found a copy of a letter written to Chapur by her husband, once considered a possible 2012 GOP presidential contender. In the months that followed, he asked several times for permission to visit his mistress. She said no.

The day his wife filed for divorce, Sanford blamed himself for what he called “the moral failure that led us to this tragic point.” In a reply to the filing last month, the governor admitted the affair and asked the court to approve his wife’s request to end their marriage.

Jenny Sanford spoke briefly in court Friday, reiterating claims that her husband had been unfaithful to her, explaining her discovery of the letter and the couple’s attempts to reconcile.

The couple’s divorce agreement was filed under seal.

Jenny Sanford has moved out of the Governor’s Mansion in Columbia and is living with the couple’s four sons at their beachside home on Sullivans Island.

Sanford, 49, is the first sitting governor to divorce in South Carolina, which in 1949 became the last state in the country to allow it. It’s not all that unusual for a governor to get divorced in office. New York first lady Mary “Tod” Rockefeller divorced Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1962 over his affair with a staff member, and Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons is in the process of divorcing first lady Dawn Gibbons.

In December, Sanford also became the first South Carolina governor censured by the state’s lawmakers, a vote that followed their unsuccessful efforts to impeach him.

Earlier this month, Jenny Sanford published a memoir, “Staying True,” and made rounds of media interviews to promote it. In the book, Jenny Sanford wrote that her husband asked her advice about his romance and how to deal with the media after she discovered his affair.

Sanford spokesman Ben Fox said Friday the governor was in Columbia reviewing legislation.

In a statement, his office noted “first lady” is not an official role and said the state would no longer provide Jenny Sanford with a staff assistant.

Still, you also can’t say Jenny was wrong to be pissed when it happened, and the fact that she obviously was — that, unlike so many previous politicians’ wives humiliated by short-sighted, philandering husbands, she didn’t literally or figuratively stand by him while he offered the requisite rationalizations and hollow apologies — made her an intriguing figure. Last June, half a dozen Broadsheet contributors pondered why she hung him out to dry before the cameras (after having let the media know he was missing, not hiking the Appalachian Trail, in the first place), later issuing a press release suggesting she might just take him back. What was she thinking? What did it all mean? Why wasn’t she following the script? Although each contributor had a different perspective, the broad (ha!) consensus there was, “Huh, that’s weird. Also, Mark Sanford? Huge douche.”

It was interesting, certainly, that after 15 years of managing her husband’s career, Jenny Sanford didn’t — as Judy Berman put it — go into the “automatic career damage control mode we saw from Hillary Clinton and Silda Wall Spitzer.” It was also interesting that, as Amanda Fortini pointed out in the round table, Jenny Sanford’s press release not-so-subtly highlighted her own career accomplishments. (“I personally believe that the greatest legacy I will leave behind in this world is not the job I held on Wall Street, or the campaigns I managed for Mark, or the work I have done as First Lady or even the philanthropic activities in which I have been routinely engaged…”) It was all kind of interesting, and kind of weird, at the time. Also, Mark Sanford? Huge douche. But several months after the nation finally moved on from the salacious story, is there really anything new to capture our interest?

Jenny Sanford’s memoir, “Staying True,” was released on Tuesday, and between that and the Barbara Walters interview, people can’t stop talking about her this week. But apart from that tidbit about their wedding vows, and the revelation that he asked for her advice on how to spin the affair to the press — damn –I haven’t heard of any juicy details that would make me want to read the book, or watch the interview, or even have a beer with the beleaguered wife. I mean, I’m sure Sanford’s a lovely person, and she’s very smart and accomplished and everything, but — with all due respect — so what?

Unfortunately for Jenny Sanford, the very thing that made her newsworthy back in June — her refusal to put her husband’s career before her understandable desire to get away from the cheating jerk — is what makes her seem a little snoozy now. It was exciting at the time only because so few politicians’ wives in similar situations have been bold enough to do exactly what we’d all expect them to, i.e., the thing that makes sense. But while doing stuff that makes sense is a fine and admirable strategy for one’s personal life, it’s not a great one for crafting a page-turner of a memoir or generating buzz about it. We’re drawn to behavior that makes no sense at all — a married governor mysteriously decamping to Argentina for days, then turning into a giddy schoolboy when speaking publicly about his mistress; a wife sticking up for her high-profile husband after he’s caught with his pants down; Jenny Sanford herself seeming more than ready to toss Mark out, yet issuing a press release that teased us all with the possibility of reconciliation. That’s the stuff that makes us think, “What the hell is going on here?” and anticipate the tell-all book explaining it.

“He acted like a huge douche, and you all know that story, so then I left” isn’t quite so compelling. In fact, according to the AP, Sanford’s publisher isn’t even openly trying to capitalize on her husband’s famous affair or her response to it: “The outside dust jacket of the book makes no mention of the affair, or even that the author is the first lady of South Carolina. The cover has just the title and her name and a picture of Sanford sitting on the beach in a rose blouse and blue jeans. The back of the dust jacket contains an excerpt from the book that includes what the author calls the simple truth she has come to learn.” Wow, really? I mean, I can appreciate the desire to rise above a tawdry scandal — that, unfortunately for Jenny Sanford’s intrigue factor, also makes perfect sense — but successful middle-aged white women sharing “simple truths” about life (SPOILER ALERT: It’s about what you put into and/or make of it) are a dime a dozen in the memoir category. I need a little more to whet my appetite before I’m willing to part with even an artificially low $9.99.

And judging by the promo for the Barbara Walters interview — which identifies Sanford, in a hilariously over-the-top movie trailer voice, as “the woman who didn’t stand by her man!” — there are no new crazy-pants jaw-droppers here, just a woman scorned, who filed for divorce and moved on. Sure, marrying a guy who refused to include fidelity in his vows, then expecting fidelity from him, is a pretty classic “What was she thinking?” move, but it doesn’t take a whole book to explain that. (“It bothered me to some extent, but … we were very young, we were in love,” she told Walters.) So, for her sake and her publisher’s, I hope Sanford’s famous name and involvement in a high-profile scandal will move a lot of books, and I do admire her personally for seeming quite strong and levelheaded. But as a reader, sometime cultural critic and aficionado of messed-up public behavior, I don’t really get what the fuss is about. If Jenny Sanford weren’t flogging a memoir right now, I’d be writing, “Why are we even talking about this? The poor woman has been through a lot, and reacted like any reasonable person would — can’t we just leave her alone?”