WASHINGTON - Former President Donald Trump has opened an office to "advance the interests of the United States and to carry on the agenda" of his administration, according to a statement released Monday night.
The ex-president's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, created a new email distribution system via one of his private companies for Trump's statements because the 2020 campaign's email infrastructure has been suspended by the vendor it had been using, Campaign Monitor, according to two people familiar with the matter.
A slew of technology platforms excised Trump accounts or subgroups, including those on Twitter, Facebook, Shopify, Twitch and Instagram, after the Jan. 6 riot by pro-Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol.
The statement from the Office of Donald J. Trump was issued less than an hour before House Democrats crossed the U.S. Capitol to deliver an article of impeachment against the former president to the Senate. That sets in motion Trump's second impeachment trial. He is accused of inciting the mob that broke into the Capitol as Congress was about to certify the results of the election he lost to Joe Biden.
One of Parscale's companies, Nucleus, built an email distribution system meant to circumvent outside vendors. Aides want to prevent media companies from silencing or "canceling" Trump in the future, one of the people said.
The letterhead on the statement indicated that the office will operate out of Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump moved after leaving the White House last week. According to the statement, the "office will be responsible for managing President Trump's correspondence, public statements, appearances, and official activities to advance the interests of the United States and to carry on the agenda of the Trump administration through advocacy, organizing, and public activism."
One of the people familiar with the matter said that among the first acts of advocacy would be to endorse the candidacy of Trump's former press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for governor of Arkansas. She announced that she was running earlier Monday.
Also on Monday, a Trump adviser said he had no plans to break from the Republican Party to pursue a third party.