Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed got slapped with a cease-and-desist letter from the Mike Rogers campaign after El-Sayed jumped on social media to spread what the campaign is calling flat-out lies about Rogers and his wife, Kristi.
Last week, the Rogers campaign already sent one cease-and-desist to Drop Site News after the outlet published a story titled “Mike Rogers’s Wife Raked in Lucrative Government Security Contracts While Rogers Served as Intel Chair.” That piece was co-authored by Nancy Skinner, a former Democrat political candidate and a donor to El-Sayed’s own campaign. Small world, right? El-Sayed then took that story and cheerfully blasted it out on X, calling it a “deep state grift” involving “massive contracts for his wife’s firm.” So now he gets his own letter.
The core claim in the story was that Kristi Rogers’ firm, Aegis, was contracted to work in Libya and was somehow tied to the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attack. There’s just one problem: none of that is true. The Rogers campaign’s attorneys at Lex Politica put it plainly in the letter, stating that Mike Rogers cease and desist letter makes clear: “Neither Mrs. Rogers, Aegis LLC, or any Aegis entity has ever entered into a contract with any department of the U.S. government to perform work in Libya, and none was involved in the Benghazi attack.”
The story also claimed Rogers used his chairmanship of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to steer government contracts to Aegis. Also false. The letter notes that the contract in question was awarded by the Obama administration’s State Department, and the Intelligence Committee has no role in awarding or overseeing State Department security contracts. Oh, and Aegis qualified to compete for that contract back in 2010, before Rogers even became Chairman. So much for that theory.
Then there’s the accusation that Rogers obstructed the Benghazi investigation to protect his wife’s company. The letter calls that false too, for the simple reason that Aegis had no Libya contract and no involvement in the attack in the first place. There was nothing to cover up. Even the Judicial Watch reporting the Drop Site article leaned on explicitly stated there is “no evidence of wrong doing by Rep. Rogers or Aegis.” You’d think a Democrat running for Senate might read his own footnotes.
The cease-and-desist demands El-Sayed stop repeating the false claims, delete the X post and any other campaign materials pushing the story, issue corrections, and preserve all documents and communications related to the article and his contact with Drop Site News. El-Sayed had until 5:00 PM Eastern today to confirm he’d complied.
Whether El-Sayed actually scrubs the post or decides to double down and lawyer up is the next move to watch. Either way, his campaign’s strategy of recycling debunked hit pieces written by his own donors isn’t exactly off to a great start.
