Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley boosted her net worth eight-fold — to $8 million — after leaving the Trump administration by giving paid speeches, writing books, and doing corporate consulting — partly in an effort to dig her parents out of crushing financial debt.
In 2018, Haley, the 51-year-old former governor of South Carolina, had a net worth of less than $1 million when she stepped down as then-President Donald Trump’s top envoy to the United Nations.
At the time, her parents — Ajit and Raj Randhawa — owed more than $1 million and were at risk of having their Lexington, S.C., home repossessed, according to Forbes.
Haley had less than $100,000 in her bank accounts while she was pulling down a salary of $185,000 per year — making it difficult to help her parents, Forbes reported.
The Randhawas were drowning in debt.
In 2000, they bought a 5,500-square-foot home near Lexington for $1.15 million — using a $920,000 loan from Bank of America to make the purchase, according to Forbes.
Three years later, Haley’s parents took out a $765,000 mortgage to help pay for a Lexington strip mall, which cost $1.3 million total.
In 2012, Haley’s father took out a second mortgage — increasing the debt load to $1.1 million against the strip mall.
At around the same time, it is believed that Raj Randhawa’s clothing business, Exotica International, went under.
Haley worked as her mother’s chief financial officer before embarking on a political career that began in 2004, when she was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives.
In 2010, Haley was elected governor, making her a national figure. She parlayed her stature into a $475,000 advance for her first book, “Can’t Is Not An Option,” which was published by Penguin Books.
In 2014, Haley and her husband, college sweetheart Michael Haley, took out a $400,000 loan which they gave to her parents — using the parents’ home and the strip mall as collateral.
In 2017, the year Haley was picked by Trump to be US ambassador to the UN, Haley’s parents stopped paying back the loan from Bank of America on their home.
That same year, the Randhawas sold the strip mall to an LLC created by their son-in-law, Michael Haley, for $5 “and love and affection” — meaning that effectively the Haleys were assuming the $1.1 million of remaining debt against the property.
In November of that year, Bank of America began foreclosure proceedings, serving court documents to the Haleys, who were junior lenders on their Lexington home, as well as to her parents, according to Forbes.
A Bank of America representative tried to serve the two couples with papers, but there was nobody to receive them.
When they tried to serve then-Ambassador Nikki Haley at the US Mission building at the United Nations, a security guard turned them away, according to Forbes.
In January 2018, Michael Haley’s LLC, Ikor Systems, sold the strip mall to a developer for $1.3 million.
That same month, Nikki Haley released the mortgage against the strip mall.
In June of that year, Haley had the mortgage against her parents’ home canceled as well. It is not believe that she was paid back the $400,000 that she loaned her parents.
Bank of America dismissed Haley from the foreclosure proceedings, but she still needed to help her parents, who were in danger of losing their home.
Three months after her parents were served court papers, Haley quit the Trump administration.
Eventually, a court ordered her parents’ home to be sold at auction.
The home went for $863,000 — some $300,000 less than what they paid in 2000.
Haley began giving paid speeches in 2019.
Last year alone, she made at least 11 appearances — resulting in a total haul of $2.3 million, according to Forbes.
In 2019, she authored a memoir that has sold over 100,000 copies.
Last year, she wrote another book that included a $350,000 advance from the publisher.
That same year, Haley took out a $1.9 million mortgage to buy a four-bedroom, 5,700-square-foot home for $2.4 million on Kiawah Island in South Carolina.
Since then, the value of the property has doubled to around $4.7 million, according to Forbes.
Haley has also made more than $700,000 in consulting fees as well as more than $300,000 in cash and stock from aerospace giant Boeing, which appointed her to the board of directors in 2019.
Haley stepped down from Boeing’s board in 2020.
She is also a director for United Homes Group, which has paid her more than $250,000 — a sum that doesn’t include future equity grants and other perks, according to Forbes.
The Post reached out to Haley for comment.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
