The chief policy director of the House Republican Conference is expected to launch a bid for president Monday, backed by Republicans who are disenfranchised by Donald Trump's run for president, according to multiple reports.
BuzzFeed News reported that Evan McMullin will file paperwork around noon Monday to run as a third-party candidate. He has been backed by "key players" in the GOP's anti-Trump movement, according to the news website. Among those rumored to be helping McMullin is Rick Wilson, a veteran Republican strategist who has spoken out multiple times against the Republican nominee for president.
The group backing McMullin's run, Better for America, confirmed to ABC News that McMullin will file paperwork Monday to launch his bid.
"In a year where Americans have lost faith in the candidates of both major parties, it's time for a generation of new leadership to step up," McMullin said in a statement released to the news network. "It's never too late to do the right thing, and America deserves much better than either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton can offer us. I humbly offer myself as a leader who can give millions of disaffected Americans a conservative choice for president."
Although McMullin is an active conservative, sources told MSNBC's Joe Scarborough that he has never held elected office before.
"McMullin has virtually no public profile," according to BuzzFeed News. "He doesn't appear regularly on television, and has just 135 followers on Twitter. His most high-profile recent appearance seems to have been a TEDx talk about genocide he gave at London Business School in April."
McMullin has spent the bulk of his career working as a CIA operations officer, according to his LinkedIn profile. He served from 1999 to 2010 before taking a job as an investment banking associate at Goldman Sachs.
He became a senior adviser to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2013 before taking a position as chief policy director for the House Republican Conference.
McMullin has spoken out against Trump on social media multiple times in the last few months. On the night Trump addressed the nation during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, McMullin described Trump as an "authoritarian."
"Our country needs leaders who are in it for the right reasons," he wrote on Facebook Thursday morning. "Leaders who actually understand what makes this nation the hope of the world. Leaders who will unite us and guide us to a prosperous, secure future in which we all share."
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