Mike Pence announcing 2024 presidential bid next week in Iowa: Source

(WASHINGTON) — Former Vice President Mike Pence will announce next week that he is running for president, giving a kickoff speech in Iowa and releasing a campaign video on June 7 ahead of a town hall with CNN later that day in Des Moines, a source familiar confirms to ABC News.

Pence will be running against his old boss, Donald Trump, in the Republican primary.

His expected announcement will come only weeks after a group of conservative allies launched a political group to support his potential candidacy.

The super PAC, Committed to America, hopes to both “reintroduce” Pence to voters — who, the group believes, don’t have a full sense of the former vice president — and to catch the attention of voters perhaps stuck on other candidates as the list of Republican hopefuls grows longer.

“People know Mike Pence, they just don’t know him well,” co-chair Scott Reed told a small group of reporters on Friday. “This campaign is going to reintroduce Mike Pence to the country as his own man, not as vice president, but as a true economic, social and national security conservative — a Reagan conservative.”

The pro-Pence group said it will make significant investments in Iowa, a state critical for Republicans as it holds the first nominating contest next year.

“We’re going to organize Iowa, all 99 counties, like we’re running him for county sheriff,” said Reed, who previously managed Sen. Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign.

In March, during an exclusive interview with ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, Pence said he was giving a run for the 2024 GOP nomination “serious consideration.”

At the time and in the ensuing months, Pence has held voter-facing events in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He also published a memoir, “So Help Me God,” in November.

“We’re getting a lot of encouragement, not only here in Iowa, but all across the country,” Pence told Karl in March. “We’re giving prayerful consideration to what role we might play.”

A key ally for Trump while they were in office, Pence has since had a notable falling out with the former president over Trump’s push to overturn their election loss — climaxing in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters breached the complex and sent Pence and Congress into hiding.

“We all face the judgment of history, and I believe in the fullness of time that history will hold Donald Trump accountable for the events of Jan. 6, as it will other people that were involved,” Pence told Karl.

He added then: “I also think the American people will also have their say. I mean, the president is now a candidate for office again, he’s running for election, but as I go around the country, I’m convinced the American people have learned the lessons of that day.”

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