The wife of Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers held top leadership posts at a controversial private military contractor while her husband chaired the House Intelligence Committee, according to new a report.
Drop Site News reviewed the Michigan Republican’s congressional financial disclosures and found that his and second wife Kristi Rogers' wealth grew substantially after he became chairman in January 2011, as the company, Aegis, won increasingly large U.S. government contracts.
According to Drop Site, Kristi Rogers, then Kristi Clemens, was a former press aide to Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer. In 2006, she pitched British firm Aegis Defence Services on launching an American offshoot. She became CEO in 2009 and was vice chair of Aegis LLC US by 2011, the year after the couple married.
Seven months after Mike Rogers became chairman, Aegis won a contract to secure the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, which Drop Site valued at $1.017 billion. The outlet reported that a biography of Kristi Rogers, later removed from the website of law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, said she led “a two-year pursuit and capture strategy to win a five-year, $10 billion contract.”
According to Drop Site, Rogers’s disclosures show the household’s reported investment income rising while he was chairman. House rules don’t require lawmakers to disclose a spouse’s salary. The outlet reported that the couple added millions more after Rogers left Congress and began working in the industry he had overseen.
Aegis was founded by Tim Spicer, whose earlier firm, Sandline, was involved in several international scandals, according to a 2004 report in The Nation. In 2005, NBC News reported on a video that appeared to show Aegis contractors firing at civilian vehicles in Iraq. Drop Site also reported that the company gave up a contractor-oversight role in Afghanistan after a whistleblower raised conflict-of-interest concerns.
When Kristi Rogers testified before the Commission on Wartime Contracting in June 2010, she called that whistleblower a “disgruntled former employee,” according to the report.
The company’s activities in Libya before the 2012 Benghazi attack later drew scrutiny. Drop Site reported that some conservatives, including Dick Morris and former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova, accused Mike Rogers of slow-walking the Benghazi investigation to protect his wife’s firm.
A House Intelligence Committee spokesperson said at the time that “strictly observed and enforced” policies required “no interaction between the Committee and any representative of Aegis.” Judicial Watch’s Micah Morrison, who wrote a critical 2014 analysis of the couple, said there was “no evidence of wrong-doing by Rep. Rogers or Aegis.”
Rogers announced in 2014 that he would not seek re-election, and his wife left Aegis that spring, reported Drop Site.
Rogers lost a 2024 Senate bid and is running again this year against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who has attacked him for making up to $14 million in the private sector from the kinds of companies he once regulated.
The Rogers campaign did not respond to Drop Site’s requests for comment. Rogers has previously said his work in Congress and his wife’s work at Aegis were kept separate.