In the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election, as President Trump refused to accept defeat and pumped out false claims about voter fraud, Mike Rogers was a clear and consistent voice of reproach.
Mr. Rogers, a former Republican representative from Michigan, denounced Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the election as “cause for both concern and alarm.” He ripped the president’s pressure on Georgia’s top election official “as more gangster than presidential.” As for Mr. Trump’s role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Rogers declared, “You’re damn right you had responsibility for this.”
But as he aims to return to Washington, in a Senate race considered key to control of that chamber, Mr. Rogers has become an election skeptic. Minutes after the president’s recent speech filled with outlandish accusations about voting fraud — including a debunked claim about Michigan ballots — Mr. Rogers weighed in, suggesting that further scrutiny of the election was warranted.
“I am thankful for President Trump’s commitment to transparency,” Mr. Rogers said on his social media accounts. “The news coming out of the White House tonight is deeply troubling — especially that of a voter fraud scheme right here in Michigan.”
Mr. Rogers has also suggested that voting irregularities sunk his Senate bid two years ago — based on an unproven claim about late-arriving Detroit ballots that Mr. Trump has amplified and that echoed accusations made by election deniers in 2020.
Mr. Rogers’s pivot on voting issues reflects the journey of a politician who built a national reputation as a mainstream Republican more than a decade ago, in the pre-Trump era, and is attempting a second act in a political arena remade by a president who demands absolute fealty from his fellow Republicans.
“Now he’s toeing the MAGA line,” said former Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who served with Mr. Rogers in the House and calls him a friend. “I don’t want to speculate on his motives for talking about the 2020 election, but that election is over. The 2024 election is over.”
In response to questions from The New York Times about Mr. Rogers’s recent comments about the 2020 election and his loss in 2024, Alyssa Brouillet, the campaign spokeswoman, blamed Democrats for undermining public faith in elections.
“This is about protecting free and fair elections,” she said. “Every American deserves to know that their vote counts and isn’t canceled out by an illegal vote.”
Mr. Rogers’s campaign did not provide any evidence to back up his claim about his 2024 defeat.
Mr. Rogers now faces the newly minted Democratic nominee, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official from the left wing of his party, in the November election. Mr. Trump said earlier this week that Dr. El-Sayed had “a real shot” in a state he claimed was riddled with voter fraud.
“Get ready for another Rigged Election,” he said.
‘Trump’s time has passed’
Mr. Rogers, 63, is a former F.B.I. special agent and Army officer who served in Congress for 14 years, including four as the powerful chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. One of his party’s leading voices on national security and foreign policy, Mr. Rogers was a frequent guest on Sunday morning talk shows. When he announced he would not seek re-election in 2014, a Democratic colleague described him as “a voice for moderation and consensus-building.”
Mr. Rogers was working as a CNN commentator in 2020 when Mr. Trump rejected Joe Biden’s victory and argued the election had been rigged.
“I think it’s very corrosive,” Mr. Rogers said in one of several cable network appearances criticizing the president. Mr. Rogers also wrote columns in The Detroit News and The Washington Post that accused Mr. Trump of setting “an exceptionally dangerous precedent” and of making claims “without proof, only conspiracy and hearsay.”
In 2022, as Mr. Rogers explored a possible presidential bid by visiting early-voting primary states, he called the president’s tactics “clearly destructive” and said, “Trump’s time has passed.”
But Mr. Rogers’s political calculus appeared to change the next year, when he decided to run for an open Senate seat. He joined a crowded Republican field and landed Mr. Trump’s endorsement. Mr. Trump viewed the former congressman as the strongest Senate candidate in a state key to his re-election, and the two men built a rapport during the 2024 campaign, according to a person familiar with the relationship who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The editorial board of The Detroit Free Press reported in June 2024 that when it asked the Senate candidate whether Mr. Biden won the 2020 election, he refused to answer — a sign of Mr. Rogers’s newfound loyalty to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Rogers won the primary two months later but narrowly lost to Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, even as Mr. Trump carried the state. Weeks later, an aide to the president-elect quashed speculation that Mr. Rogers was under consideration for F.B.I. director amid a backlash from MAGA influencers, who saw the former intelligence official who had worked for CNN as part of the loathed “deep state.”
But after Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, announced his retirement in January 2025, Mr. Rogers said Mr. Trump convinced him to get back on the campaign trail.
“The president called and said, ‘Mike, I need you to do this. I need you in the Senate, and here’s the only thing I’m going to ask you: win,’ ” Mr. Rogers told a Republican group in Muskegon, Mich., in October 2025, according to video reviewed by The Times.
At that same event, Mr. Rogers cast doubt on the legitimacy of Ms. Slotkin’s victory, referring to a van carrying ballots that “showed up” in Detroit the morning after the election. He gave the same account at another event earlier that month and said those ballots had “swung the election.” His comments about the van were previously reported by The Detroit News.
“Mike Rogers knows better,” said Christopher Thomas, who served as Michigan’s elections director for more than three decades before becoming an adviser to voting officials in Detroit. “Mike Rogers knows no one stole the election from him in 2024, and he knows full well no one stole the election from Trump in 2020.”
‘He didn’t have all the information’
This year, Mr. Rogers is running not just with the president’s endorsement but also with the help of many of his closest associates. His current campaign team includes Chris LaCivita, a co-manager of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign; Katie Walsh Shields, Mr. Trump’s former deputy chief of staff; and Tony Fabrizio, a pollster and senior adviser to the president.
Norm Shinkle, a veteran Republican Party leader in Michigan, dismissed the former congressman’s past criticism of the president.
“If you took all the Republicans who used to be critical of Trump and disqualified them, the president would lose half his cabinet,” Mr. Shinkle quipped. “I think if Mike Rogers thought Trump did something wrong he might correct him again, but now that he’s got his endorsement he might do it more politely.”
Linda Lee Tarver, a Republican activist in Michigan who backed Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, said she did not blame Mr. Rogers for opposing those efforts six years ago. “He didn’t have all the information,” she said. Ms. Tarver also suggested that Mr. Rogers’s view of that vote might have changed after his loss in the 2024 Senate race.
“We know in our hearts that he won,” said Ms. Tarver, who is serving on Mr. Rogers’s campaign coalition of religious leaders. “Tell me, how would you feel about losing by 19,000 votes in a state with illegal voting? That had to have changed his view.”
Cheri Hardmon, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State, said Mr. Rogers never formally raised concerns about the election results by requesting a recount or filing a court challenge. She described elections in the state as “safe, secure.”
Mr. Upton, the former Michigan representative, predicted that Mr. Rogers would now lean toward the political center in an effort to court the independent and moderate voters who are key to winning a Midwestern swing state.
Only 33 percent of likely Michigan voters say the president is doing an excellent or pretty good job, according to a recent Epic-MRA poll. “You’ll see the old Mike Rogers,” Mr. Upton said.
On Friday, Mr. Rogers posted a video to his social media accounts speaking directly to Democrats about housing, education and taxes. “You have a home with us,” he said.
But Mr. Trump remains fixated on voting fraud and has seized on Mr. Rogers’s claim about his defeat in the 2024 Senate race. In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club in January, the president asserted Mr. Rogers “won” a Senate seat two years ago and said, “I think they took that away from you last time.”
“They rigged the election on you,” he added.
Mr. Rogers posted the president’s remarks on X and featured them in a fund-raising appeal.
When the two men campaigned together last month in Michigan, Mr. Trump said, “I happen to think he won last time.”
Mr. Rogers vowed that if he were elected to the Senate, he would help pass legislation backed by the president that would impose nationwide voter identification and proof of citizenship requirements and limit voting by mail.
Mr. Trump then called up John James, a Republican candidate for governor, to the stage. “Thank you Mr. President for coming back to Michigan, where you’ve won three times,” Mr. James said. (Mr. Trump carried the state in 2016 and 2024 but lost in 2020.)
Mr. Rogers stood to Mr. James’s right, his hands clasped.
The post In Michigan, a Former Trump Critic Shifts Toward Election Skepticism appeared first on New York Times.
