Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is expected to announce her candidacy for governor of Arkansas on Monday, according to two people familiar with her plans.
Sanders has been campaigning since she left her post in 2019 and has been quietly planning for the bid for the past year. The current government of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, cannot run again in 2022 due to election restrictions.
Sanders, whose father, Mike Huckabee, was governor of the state from 1996 to 2007, is expected to begin her candidacy on Monday.
Sanders took over as press secretary from Sean Spicer, who resigned in 2017. She was a loyal ally of former President Donald Trump and had a controversial relationship with the White House press corps. year term of office.
When Trump announced that Sanders was leaving her position in June 2019, she did not hold a briefing in 94 days.
Sanders had come under fire weeks earlier when the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election by special lawyer Robert Mueller revealed that she had made an allegation about the dismissal of former FBI director James Comey.
Sanders said during a briefing one day after Comey’s firing in 2017 that ‘countless’ FBI agents had told the White House that they had lost confidence in Comey. But according to Mueller’s report, she told federal investigators she had no evidence to substantiate the claim.
Sanders described the false allegation as a ‘slip of the tongue’.
