Audio of Trump-backed Senate candidate Mike Rogers arguing that the names of some people who flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane should be hidden from public view boomeranged on him two weeks before Election Day, after Michigan Democrats resurfaced the clip, in which he also dismissed critics who “just want to be after” President Donald Trump.
The Michigan Democratic Party resurfaced the audio Tuesday in a post on X, saying Rogers argued the files should be “redacted to protect Trump and his other associates.”
Rogers made the remarks during a July 2025 appearance on Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s show, the Detroit Metro Times noted last month. Rogers, a former House Intelligence Committee chairman endorsed by Trump, is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
“I do believe you have to protect victims. You also have to protect somebody who got on an airplane and rode with him,” Rogers told Kilmeade.
“They may have had… legitimate business reason. You can’t put that person out there. The court of public opinion would ruin their life for no reason,” he continued.
“The things… around [Epstein’s] island and all of that, to me, that ought to be released,” Rogers said. “But I would be cautious how you do it, and I don’t think a big, a big ugly vote on the House floor was the right way to do that.”
“You do have to protect not only the victims, but the innocent people who get sucked up. So their name is on a report somewhere. It doesn’t mean they did one thing wrong in the raw files,” Rogers argued.
“You don’t want to hurt that person’s career or reputation or family either,” he added. “You can’t do it in a big sloppy way.”
“And listen, people who just want to be after Trump are just going to beat this drum all day long, because they don’t have anything else,” Rogers said.
Rogers pressed the point in a separate podcast appearance that July, arguing that names should be redacted, or blacked out, if there was no evidence the person knew about or took part in Epstein’s crimes, the Metro Times reported.
By the time Rogers argued for protecting people named in the records, Trump’s name in the files was already public. The Justice Department released flight logs from Epstein’s plane in February 2025 showing Trump and his family were passengers, Montana’s Belgrade News reported.
In June 2025, about a month before the Kilmeade interview, former White House adviser Elon Musk posted on X that Trump “is in the Epstein files,” PolitiFact reported.
The Metro Times report also found that at least seven donors named in the released files have given nearly $4.7 million to Rogers’ campaign and groups backing him since 2023. The report said some are mentioned only in other people’s messages.
More than $4.5 million of the total came from Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who gave to a super PAC supporting Rogers and faces no allegations of wrongdoing tied to Epstein, according to the Metro Times. Another donor, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan, is named hundreds of times in the records, which show he and Epstein were in contact years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction, the outlet reported.
“Mike Rogers is a former FBI agent who busted human traffickers,” campaign spokeswoman Alyssa Brouillet told the Metro Times in response. “The insinuation that he would take money from anyone engaged in that activity is disgusting.”
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