In Howley’s view, Breitbart has lost its street cred by trying to go mainstream, and it no longer provides a voice for the “populist nationalist” movement that Trump represents.

“Breitbart’s dropping the ball in term of explaining what all of this is about,” Howley said. He’s not pleased, for example, that the site hired John Carney from The Wall Street Journal to lead business and economics coverage. “They’re going in a direction that I don’t think is interesting. I think it’s boring,” he said.

“After Steve [Bannon] left, the people who are in charge of it now are more interested in being a mainstream organization that has credibility in the eyes of people who read The Wall Street Journal,” he said. Dustin Stockton, another former Breitbart reporter who will serve as chief strategist for the group, was more measured, describing their relationship with their former organization as “really good.”

Howley wouldn’t say whether Bannon is aware of or has given his blessing to their group.

“You’d have to ask him,” he said. “Bannon is somebody who is a contact of ours in the administration and he’s always believed in me and he’s always believed in Dustin.”

Bannon left Breitbart News after joining the Trump campaign in August.

“I imagine there will be lots of competition to Breitbart, as there should be—it's healthy,” Bannon said of the new group. “I'm still struck by how those on the left have not come up with a progressive version that goes after the Democratic establishment.”

Howley plans an investigative outfit called Big League Politics as the media arm of his project, though Stockton said the launch for that site was some time away. The group has also brought on board Jen Lawrence, another former Breitbart reporter (and also Stockton’s girlfriend), as well as Bruce Carter, an activist who ran a pro-Bernie Sanders group called Black Men For Bernie. Stockton said Lee Stranahan, a longtime Breitbart News writer, would informally advise the group while continuing to write for Breitbart. “A rising tide lifts all boats, so I view Donald Trump's victory in November as a rejection of establishment media and a chance for a wave of new media outlets to provide reporting and energize activism,” Stranahan said. “Breitbart's enormous new audience gets news from a variety of outlets already and I think Dustin, Jen and their team will be able to provide more of the kind of journalism that Breitbart readers appreciate.”

Stockton said the group will be structured for now through an already extant (albeit bare-bones) PAC called the Western Representation PAC in order to be able to launch quickly. Stockton is still working out the details of how the group will be legally structured, but for now it will be a “hybrid PAC”: a traditional political action committee operating in tandem with a super PAC.