The official deployment ceremony for a South Carolina Army National Guard brigade that includes Michael Haley, the husband of Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, is set to take place Saturday in Charleston.
The ceremony is scheduled to be held at The Citadel military college ahead of the brigade's deployment to Africa in support of the United States Africa Command.
One person familiar with the details of the deployment told CNN that Michael Haley will likely remain deployed through the spring of 2024, which overlaps with much of the Republican primary nominating calendar. This will be his second active-duty deployment overseas -- he previously served in Afghanistan as part of the South Carolina Army National Guard in 2013 when his wife was serving as the state's governor.
"This is the start of what, my and my family, will be a yearlong prayer that they're effective and that they're strong and that they come home safely," Nikki Haley, who was also the US ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, said at a CNN town hall in Iowa earlier this month.
"We're so proud," the former governor said when asked how she and her family felt about Michael Haley going overseas for a year. "We love him so much. This is -- it's not our first rodeo. He did this when I was governor. He seems to find really interesting times, you know, but what you realize is deployments are never convenient but they're necessary."
Nikki Haley earlier this week referenced her husband's upcoming deployment when she offered a rare rebuke of former President Donald Trump over his federal indictment for his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Trump was arraigned this week in a Miami federal court and pleaded not guilty to 37 charges, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information.
"My husband is about to deploy this weekend. This puts all of our military men and women in danger if you are going to talk about what our military is capable of or how we would go about invading or doing something with one of our enemies," Nikki Haley said on Fox News.
She said that if the charges against Trump were true, then "Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security." Her comments represented a sharp departure from the statement she had put out prior to the indictment being unsealed in which she characterized the move against Trump as "prosecutorial overreach" and "vendetta politics," echoing the argument made by the former president as he attacks the justice system and denies any wrongdoing.
But the former UN ambassador said this week she would be inclined to pardon Trump if she were elected president because, she argued, "the issue is less about guilt and more about what's good for the country." She criticized the Department of Justice, arguing it had "handled this whole thing terribly."
Michael Haley has not been traveling with his wife as she campaigns in early nominating states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, but he was present at her CNN town hall, a day after the couple attended Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst's "Roast and Ride" fundraiser in Des Moines. The latter event was one of the campaign season's first "cattle calls" -- gatherings of large crowds of Republicans in states that vote early on the primary calendar -- and was attended by almost all the 2024 GOP candidates, with Trump a notable absentee.
