Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers claimed in a fundraising email that he saw Osama bin Laden's dead body with his own eyes, but records show he was not present at the raid or in the Situation Room. Instead, he saw a photograph of the body, as he acknowledged days after the 2011 operation.
Fundraising email claim
In the email, sent on Sunday, Rogers wrote: “When I served as a US army officer and an FBI special agent, I swore a sacred oath to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I dedicated my life to keeping our families safe – working in the shadows, hunting down terrorists, and standing on the frontlines of our national security.”
He added in bold: “I saw the dead body of Osama bin Laden with my own eyes, knowing that together, we had delivered justice for America.” The email was shared online by Azi Paybarah, a former Washington Post reporter now with Straight Arrow News.
What actually happened
Rogers was not in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on 1 May 2011, when bin Laden was killed, nor was he in the White House Situation Room. As he told reporters the next day and in a campaign video, he was at home in Washington DC, where he was informed about the raid in a phone call from CIA director Leon Panetta. He was chair of the House intelligence committee at the time.
Paybarah suggested Rogers must have been referring to seeing a photograph of bin Laden's dead body, one of a select few US officials to do so. Rogers said days after the raid that the photo made it clear bin Laden was dead, but he supported Obama's decision not to release the graphic images. “The risks of release outweigh the benefits,” Rogers said in a statement at the time.
Campaign context
Rogers has frequently referenced his role in the war on terror in vague terms. Since Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim doctor and former public health official, became his opponent, Rogers has cited his role in campaign statements. “Abdul doesn’t represent a vision for the future. He’s leading a movement grounded in ideological fanaticism,” Rogers said the night El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination. “I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11.”
A New York Times factcheck pointed out that the second part of Rogers’ statement was false: it was not El-Sayed, but one of his supporters, Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who once said that America deserved 9/11, before retracting and apologizing seven years before endorsing El-Sayed. El-Sayed has denounced the 9/11 attacks for years, writing in 2021: “I watched terrorists with names like mine attack my country in the name of my faith. Three thousand of my fellow Americans were killed in the craven terrorist attacks in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania. The attack devastated me.”
