The proof

2001

He “helped author” and voted for the Patriot Act.

Sources

• House vote record: roll call 398, Oct. 24, 2001The Patriot Act (H.R. 3162) passed 357 to 66. Rogers (MI) voted yes.
• Congress.gov: H.R. 3162The bill, signed into law on Oct. 26, 2001.
• Rogers’ own House office, archived January 2011Its press release says that in Congress he “helped author the USA PATRIOT Act and its renewals.” He was not a sponsor of the bill.

2008

He voted for a spying law that let the government collect the calls and emails of people overseas without a warrant. Americans’ messages got swept in too. When people warned it would spy on Americans, he called that “fear mongering.”

Sources

• House vote record: roll call 437, June 20, 2008The 2008 spying law (H.R. 6304) passed 293 to 129. Rogers (MI) voted yes.
• The law as signed (Public Law 110-261)It let the government target people “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States” for up to a year, without a court order for each person.
• Washington Post, July 5, 2014In a large set of messages the NSA intercepted, 9 of 10 account holders were not the people it was targeting, and nearly half the files held details on U.S. citizens or residents.
• Congressional Record, June 20, 2008, page H5765On the House floor, Rogers said claims that the bill failed to protect Americans’ rights were “simply not true. It is fear mongering.” He said any American who believed their phones would be tapped “is simply wrong.”

2008

He voted to protect phone companies from being sued for helping the government spy on customers without warrants.

Sources

• House vote record: roll call 437, June 20, 2008Rogers (MI) voted yes on the 2008 law, which included the lawsuit shield.
• The law as signed, section 802Courts must throw out lawsuits against companies that helped the government spy between Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 17, 2007, once the attorney general certifies their help.
• House vote record: roll call 145, March 14, 2008The House’s own version of the bill, which had no such shield, passed 213 to 197. Rogers (MI) voted no.
• Congressional Record, March 14, 2008, page H1712A description of that House version: it “does not provide for any retroactive immunity.”
• Congressional Record, June 20, 2008, page H5765Rogers defended the shield: “if you in good faith help your neighbor or help your country, in good faith you will be protected from damages sought by anyone else.”

Three times

He voted against making the government get a warrant before wiretapping Americans.

Sources

• House vote record: roll call 107, April 26, 2006A plan to make the court-order wiretap laws the only legal way to spy electronically inside the U.S. failed 195 to 230. Rogers (MI) voted no. Text at page H1809 of the Congressional Record.
• House vote record: roll call 295, June 20, 2006A ban on using defense money to wiretap inside the U.S. outside those laws failed 207 to 219. Rogers (MI) voted no. The sponsor said it made the government get a court order before spying on Americans or inside the U.S. (Congressional Record, page H4276).
• House vote record: roll call 339, May 11, 2007The same rule for spying on foreign targets passed 245 to 178. Rogers (MI) voted no. Text at page H4904 of the Congressional Record.

2013

The House voted on stopping the government from collecting millions of Americans’ phone records. Mike Rogers helped lead the fight to keep collecting them. It lost by 12 votes.

Sources

• House vote record: roll call 412, July 24, 2013The plan to stop collecting Americans’ phone records failed 205 to 217. Rogers (MI) voted no.
• Congressional Record, July 24, 2013, page H5024Rogers, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, spoke first against it: “passing this amendment takes us back to September 10.”
• NPR, July 24, 2013The close vote, and Rogers urging members to vote no.

2014

He voted against a bipartisan plan to stop the government from searching Americans’ emails, texts, and photos without a warrant. It passed the House anyway. House leaders later dropped it, so it never became law.

Sources

• House vote record: roll call 327, June 19, 2014The plan passed 293 to 123, with both parties split. Rogers (MI) voted no.
• Congressional Record, June 19, 2014, page H5544The plan’s text: no money to search the collected data for information about Americans without a court order.
• The sponsors’ summaryIt “prohibits warrantless searches” of Americans’ data. Americans’ “emails, photos, and text messages” are swept up by the program it covers.
• Reason, Dec. 10, 2014House leaders dropped it from the final spending bill.

2013

As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he said: “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.”

Sources

• C-SPAN video of the exchangeFrom the committee’s open hearing on Oct. 29, 2013.
• House Intelligence Committee hearing noticeThe Oct. 29, 2013 hearing, chaired by Rogers, with law professor Stephen Vladeck as a witness.
• Stephen Vladeck in Slate, Oct. 31, 2013The witness quotes the exchange in full.
• Techdirt, Oct. 30, 2013

2011

He wrote a bill that would have let companies hand your emails, chats, and browsing history to the government, including the NSA. It also would have protected those companies from lawsuits. Groups on the left and the right fought it. It never became law.

Sources

• The bill as introduced, Nov. 30, 2011 (H.R. 3523)Introduced by “Mr. Rogers of Michigan.”
• The bill as passed by the HouseThe lawsuit shield: “No civil or criminal cause of action shall lie or be maintained in Federal or State court against a protected entity...”
• House vote record: roll call 192, April 26, 2012Passed the House 248 to 168.
• House vote record: roll call 117, April 18, 2013He brought it back in 2013 (H.R. 624). It passed the House 288 to 127.
• Congress.gov: H.R. 3523 and H.R. 624The Senate never passed either one, so neither became law.
• Coalition letter, April 16, 2012Groups on the left and the right, including the ACLU, the Republican Liberty Caucus, and The Rutherford Institute, warned it would send “sensitive information like internet use history or the content of emails” to agencies including the NSA.
• EFF, April 23, 2012Free-market groups including FreedomWorks, the American Conservative Union, and Americans for Limited Government raised the same problems.

$103,000

Companies and groups that lobbied on that bill gave him at least $103,000.

Sources

• OpenSecrets, April 20, 2012Twelve companies and groups that lobbied on the bill gave Rogers or his leadership PAC at least $103,000 that election cycle. Archived copy.

$360,000

After Congress, he joined the board of a cybersecurity company started by the former head of the NSA, Keith Alexander. It gave him more than $360,000 in stocks and compensation in two years.

Sources

• IronNet proxy statement, May 2022 (SEC)Rogers had served on the board of IronNet since May 2015. Keith Alexander founded the company in 2014. Rogers’ director pay for the year ending January 2022: $212,689 ($196,320 in stock, $16,369 in cash).
• IronNet prospectus, October 2021 (SEC)His director pay for the year ending January 2021: $150,600 in stock. Two years together: $363,289.

$94,000

After Congress, he advised a phone company that admitted helping Nicolás Maduro’s government spy on Venezuelans. It paid him more than $94,000.

Sources

• Michigan Advance, Jan. 20, 2026Rogers sat on an advisory board at Telefónica, a phone company based in Spain, from April 2018 to October 2024. His Senate financial disclosures show $94,241 in pay from the board; his pay from 2018 to 2022 isn’t public. In 2022, the company admitted that it had helped Maduro’s government spy on its customers in Venezuela, intercepting the communications of 1.5 million of them in 2021.

2024

Now he admits the FBI “completely abused” these powers.

Sources

• The Steve Gruber Show, April 23, 2024Asked about spying on Americans without a warrant, Rogers says at about 5:05: “it seems to me the FBI completely abused that and that needed to be fixed.”