Lincoln Project to become media company after election and may help create 'House of Cards' style TV show

The Lincoln Project is reportedly looking to expand its media business after 3 November’s election, and is considering offers from television studios for a House of Cards style show.

The group, a Republican political action committee that is aiming to prevent president Donald Trump’s election, was formed in December 2019 by several high profile Republicans who previously worked for the party, or publicly supported it prior to the 2016 election.

It has released numerous ads over the last 10 months criticising the president and his administration, while recently the committee has made videos in support of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

The group started expanding its output earlier this year and launched a successful podcast in June, which receives around 1.5 million downloads per month, according to Axios.

It also streams two other popular shows on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and has found success selling merchandise.

However, the group has been criticised for stealing memes without attributing the authors, and spending nearly $1.4m (£1.07m) raised in March, towards its board members and firms run by them, according to the National Review.

On Tuesday, the group signed with United Talent Agency in preparation for expanding its business, Lincoln Media, according to Axios.

Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist, told Axios that the committee's founders did not originally plan to create a long-term media business.

“We discovered in doing research that voters are getting lots of information from streaming and podcasts,” Mr Wilson said.

“We decided to build those things as advocacy vectors. We didn't set out to become a media company, but we've inadvertently become a content creation machine,” he added.

The Lincoln Project currently has several projects in the works, including a non-fiction film that is set to be filmed after the election.

Multiple television studios have also expressed interest in creating a show similar to Netflix hit House of Cards with the group, while television networks have reached out about hosting its two streaming shows.

The committee is also weighing up offers from other television studios, book publishers and podcast networks.

Ra Kumar, a UTA agent who represents the Lincoln Project, claimed that the amount of Hollywood companies reaching out to work with the group is unprecedented.

He added: “As a media business, we're putting a pretty big bet on the idea that they know how to get audiences.”

On Sunday, the president’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, threatened to sue the Lincoln Project for defamation over billboards that the group set up in New York City.

In the first of the billboards, a smiling Ms Trump, who like her husband is an adviser to the president, is shown standing next to a graphic of the state’s death total, which reads: “33,366 New Yorkers, 221,245 Americans.”

In the second, Mr Kushner is shown smiling standing next to a row of body bags with the caption: “New Yorkers are going to suffer and that's their problem' — Jared Kushner, Vanity Fair, September 17 2020”.

After the couple threatened to sue the committee, Matthew Sanderson, a lawyer for the Lincoln Project said that the group “will not be intimidated by empty bluster” and added: “Sue if you must.”