Independent Evan McMullin is reportedly planning to challenge Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who voted for McMullin in 2016

Evan McMullin, the anti-Trump former presidential candidate, is reportedly running to challenge Republican Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) for his Senate seat next year.

In a strange twist of irony, Lee revealed days after the 2016 election that he had voted for McMullin as a protest vote against then-candidate Donald Trump.

McMullin made waves when he announced his candidacy for president as a conservative alternative to that of Trump. The relatively unknown former CIA operative went on to garner more than 21% of the votes cast in Utah for president in 2016.

Robert Gehrke of the Salt Lake Tribune reported Monday that a source in the McMullin camp said an announcement of his candidacy for U.S. Senate would be made soon.

The source also indicated that McMullin would run as an independent.

In 2016, Trump mocked McMullin's campaign by referring to him as "McMuffin" at rallies.

"That's correct, that's his name, he said Evan McMuffin, do you believe this?" Trump said at a rally in 2016. "I never heard of this guy before. Nobody did. And the polls said he's even with Donald Trump. My wife said, she looked at the television and she said he's not even with you. Believe me, he's not even."

McMullin has since continued his attacks on Trump and his supporters from missives fired off from his social media accounts and as a guest on liberal cable news channels. In February, he called the Republican Party "sick" and "rotten to the core" over its defense of Trump in the face of accusations that he had helped inspire the Jan. 6 rioting at the U.S. Capitol.

If he decides to run, McMullin might take Lee to task over recent reports that the senator, who was a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, was actively seeking out whether states would be willing to decertify or recertify their votes in an attempt to invalidate the results of the 2020 election.

Here's Evan McMullin on MSNBC criticizing the GOP and Trump:

Evan McMullin: The Republican Party Is 'Rotten To The Core' | The Last Word | MSNBCwww.youtube.com