The Mike Rogers campaign has hit Drop Site News with a cease-and-desist letter, demanding a correction and retraction for a false story the outlet published on October 13. That story, titled "Mike Rogers’s Wife Raked in Lucrative Government Security Contracts While Rogers Served as Intel Chair."
That story is completely false, the Rogers campaign tells Townhall, and was co-authored by someone who donated to Abdul El-Sayed's campaign.
The letter, shared exclusively with Townhall, says the piece "contains false statements of fact and, through the selection and juxtaposition of facts, conveys false and defamatory implications about Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. Those statements and implications are defamatory and place Mr. and Mrs. Rogers in a false light."
The first claim is that Aegis, under the leadership of Kristi Rogers, performed U.S. government work in Libya and was connected to the September 2012 attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi. The implication is that Aegis and Kristi Rogers "held a U.S. government contract in Libya and bore some responsibility for the events in Benghazi."
"That is false," the letter says. "Neither Mrs. Rogers, Aegis LLC, nor 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."
Drop Site also falsely claimed that Mike Rogers used his position as the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to obtain government contracts for his wife and Aegis. The story implied that Aegis received a contract seven months after Mike Rogers was appointed Chairman in January 2011. Rogers had no role in and no oversight over the award of that contract, which was made under the State Department during the Obama administration. The article itself admits, "Aegis was qualified to compete for that work in 2010, before Rogers became Chairman. The Intelligence Committee does not award or oversee State Department security contracts, and the Committee maintained a strictly enforced policy of no interaction with Mrs. Rogers or any Aegis representative" — a policy quoted by Drop Site itself.
The third false claim is that Mike Rogers obstructed the Benghazi investigation to protect his wife's company. "Mr. Rogers did not obstruct the Benghazi investigation and, because Aegis had no contract and no involvement in Libya or Benghazi, there was nothing to shield, and so the entire premise of the accusation is false," the letter said.
Every false claim made by Drop Site is "directly contradicted by the public record."
"The statements and implications described above are false, were published to a broad audience, and harm the reputations of Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. They expose Mr. and Mrs. Rogers to public contempt and ridicule, discourage others from associating or dealing with them, and tend to lower them in the estimation of the community," the letter continued.
The defamatory and false article on the Rogers came at the same time as his Democrat opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, was facing increasing scrutiny — including from NBC News — over his connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed denied the connection, despite his sister's well-documented social media comments about family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
And here's where it gets even more interesting: the cease-and-desist letter notes that one of the Drop Site article's co-authors, Nancy Skinner, is a former Democrat candidate for office and has made contributions to Abdul El-Sayed's campaign.
"A co-author's financial support for Mr. Rogers' political opponent, and her personal stake in the outcome of the very election the article seeks to influence, is evidence of a motive to publish damaging claims about Mr. Rogers regardless of truth," the letter said. "That motive does not stand alone. The article quotes Judicial Watch's conclusion that '[t]here is no evidence of wrongdoing by Rep. Rogers or Aegis,' acknowledges the Intelligence Committee's policy of no interaction with Mrs. Rogers or any Aegis representative, and recognizes that Aegis was qualified to compete for the Kabul contract before Mr. Rogers became Chairman."
Additionally, the letter notes that Aegis' "denial that it ever held a U.S. government contract for work in Libya has been publicly available since 2014 and appears in the very Judicial Watch reporting on which the article relies."
Attorneys for the Rogers campaign are demanding that Drop Site News publish a correction and retraction "in a manner and placement as prominent as the article"; remove or revise the article, its headline, and related social media posts; and preserve all documents and communications relating to the article, the Rogers, or Aegis. It gives Drop Site News five days to comply with these requests, noting that further legal action may be taken for failure to comply.