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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Robert Mackey

Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers says he saw Bin Laden’s body with his ‘own eyes’. He did not

An older man gestures while speaking at a lectern.
Mike Rogers speaks during a campaign event on 20 August 2026 in Detroit. Photograph: Paul Sancya/AP

In a recent fundraising email, the Republican candidate for Michigan’s open US Senate seat, former congressman Mike Rogers, appeared to mislead supporters about his past by suggesting that he had played an active role in the killing of Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida who was shot and killed in an American military raid on his compound in Pakistan in 2011.

“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,” Rogers wrote, according to a screenshot of the email shared online by Azi Paybarah, a former Washington Post reporter now with Straight Arrow News. “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.”

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