Telecom industry gave Mike Rogers nearly $100K while he pushed to deepen government data sharing

The trail of telecommunications money spans his time in the U.S. House, where he represented his mid-Michigan district from 2001 to 2015, to his current bid for the upper chamber of Congress, but also overlaps with his time in between holding office. After he left Congress, Rogers worked as a key security adviser for AT&T — which is among his largest supporters in the telecommunications industry.

Rogers’ work with AT&T and its contribution to his campaign coincided with legislation he introduced that appeared to align with AT&T’s lobbying efforts on behalf of legislation criticized by civil liberties groups, as well as their fight against net neutrality, which advocates have called one of the guiding regulation principles for a free and open internet.

The contributions and Rogers’ subsequent work in the telecommunications industry provide a window into his long record at the intersection of corporate influence, national security and consumer privacy — issues that are likely to remain relevant if the former House Intelligence Committee chair returns to Congress as Michigan’s next U.S. senator.

While campaign finance history and subsequent work for companies in the industry have raised questions about the relationship between his public policy positions and the corporate interests that have supported his political career, Rogers’ U.S. Senate campaign pushed back on assertions that he would help or write legislation that would benefit large corporations, whether they donated to his campaign or otherwise.

“Mike Rogers has protected the national security interests of the United States his entire career, and nothing is going to change that,” Rogers spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet said in a statement. “It’s rich that the guy who campaigns on ‘getting money out of politics’ is now rolling out the red carpet for Chuck Schumer’s Super PAC. Which one is it, Abdul?” 

When asked about that claim, El-Sayed spokesperson Roxie Richner sent the Advance the following statement:

“Abdul has never solicited a corporate PAC check for his campaigns. Mike Rogers has taken $5.2 million from corporate PACs over the course of his career to do the bidding of Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Oil. Michiganders are still paying the price at the pump and at the pharmacy.”

Corporate PAC contributions from AT&T, Verizon and CTIA — the trade association representing wireless communications in the United States — to Rogers’ various campaigns, total $95,000, and include his current bid for the U.S. Senate. That figure spans Federal Election Commission campaign finance records between 2006 and 2025.

At least 21 different contributions were made to Rogers for Congress, Rogers for Senate and the candidate’s Securing America’s Future PAC, according to two decades’ worth of financial reports, with AT&T, through its federal PAC, giving Rogers $56,000.

Seventeen contributions from Verizon’s PAC, and its pre-Citizens United “good government club,” were made to Rogers’ House campaigns and his PAC between 2007 and 2014. Verizon gave Rogers a total of $28,500 during that period.

CTIA began giving to Rogers’ House campaigns starting in 2008 and its last contribution to a Rogers-related committee was in 2013 to the Securing America’s Future PAC. The association gave Rogers $10,000 over that period, FEC records show.

Rogers led initiatives on government data sharing, net neutrality

During his time in Congress, Rogers introduced the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA. The bill would have allowed telecom companies and internet service providers, or ISPs, to legally hand over swaths of private user data, including personally identifiable customer information, to the federal government, including agencies such as the National Security Agency, without judicial oversight. 

Various civil liberties, consumer rights, conservative and libertarian political groups were among those opposed to CISPA, citing concerns that the language was dangerously vague and would allow the government to access vast quantities of personal information without a warrant.

Rogers introduced the bill in November 2011. It passed the U.S. House but stalled in the U.S. Senate. In 2013, Rogers reintroduced the bill, but it continued to meet resistance in the upper chamber after clearing the House a second time in April 2013.

Rogers also co-sponsored two resolutions in 2010 and 2011 that would have prevented the Federal Communications Commission from regulating the broadband industry, and could have curtailed net neutrality rules.

Net neutrality is a regulatory principle that dictates equal treatment of internet communications from ISPs, allowing users to access content regardless of what that content is, what websites it appeared on, the platform or the application used to access that content, and the equipment, source address, destination or communication method.

Free expression advocates have argued that the principle is key to maintaining a free and open internet infrastructure.

Rogers defended legislation backed by telecommunications companies

AT&T publicly supported and lobbied for the legislation, as the company would have benefited from its new allowances for personal data sharing, and would have had broad immunity from civil and criminal lawsuits if it shared cybersecurity data with the government. By November 2011, AT&T had already contributed $27,000 to Rogers’ congressional campaigns, FEC records show.

When the bill was reintroduced, both CTIA and US Telecom provided quotes to Rogers in news releases. AT&T is a member of both CTIA and US Telecom. By the time the bills were introduced and later reintroduced between 2011 and 2013, CTIA had given Rogers $6,000, FEC records show.

Verizon joined AT&T, CTIA and US Telecom in lobbying for the changes announced in the legislation. Verizon had up to that point given Rogers $23,000.

Mike Rogers made almost $100K advising a company that helped Maduro regime spy on its citizens

Rogers dismissed privacy concerns raised against his CISPA legislation, and argued in favor of telecommunication companies having liability protections in civil and criminal matters.

He defended the NSA and other government agencies that conducted warrantless surveillance of American citizens, saying in 2013 that, “you can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.”

When he was advocating for CISPA’s passage, Rogers in 2013 claimed that the NSA didn’t monitor citizens’ use of the internet in the U.S.

“Our NSA is not monitoring the Internet here in the United States,” Rogers said then. “I can guarantee you that.”

The New York Times, however, in 2015 reported that AT&T helped the NSA conduct surveillance by tracking “vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States,” noting again that it did so in a decades-long partnership with just one company — AT&T.

Rogers went to work for AT&T, other telecoms after leaving office

When he left federal office in 2015, Rogers kept up his ties with telecommunications, working with AT&T as its chief security adviser. The Detroit News in 2024, reporting on Rogers’ past connections to Chinese firms through American telecommunication companies, confirmed that Rogers in 2016 worked with AT&T to advise them on cybersecurity.

Rogers helped guide AT&T’s strategy on the same types of issues that came before him as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, just one of several roles he held within the telecommunications industry after his time in Congress.

Rogers was an advisory board member at Telefónica, a multinational telecommunications corporation operating largely in Latin America and Europe, between 2018 and 2024. One of its subsidiaries is Telefónica Movistar, operating in Venezuela.

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As the Advance reported in January of this year, a transparency report issued by Telefónica itself in 2022 revealed that a wide swath of data interceptions into the private communications of Venezuelan Telefónica Movistar customers at the behest of the authoritarian regime led by former President Nicolas Maduro.

A report from Business Insider in 2024 noted that Rogers’ post-congressional work in the telecommunication and cybersecurity industry earned him $2 million in income, and his assets grew to $17.5 million during that time.

When Rogers sought the seat of former U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing) in 2024, a bid he lost to current U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly), AT&T’s PAC gave Rogers $10,000 in campaign contributions, FEC records show.

In his current bid against El-Sayed, Rogers has received $5,000 from AT&T’s corporate PAC.