Mike Rogers Pressed Abdul El-Sayed on the Muslim Brotherhood in Michigan's Final Senate Debate: 'Are You for America?'

Mike Rogers, the Republican running for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat, looked across the debate stage Wednesday night at Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and asked the question that has hung over this race for weeks. "If you are going to go to the United States Senate, we need to know, are you for America? Or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?" Rogers said. "You can grin and you can smile and you can talk real pretty, but I'm going to tell you what, that is a risk to our national security" (WXYZ debate video).

El-Sayed, a former Wayne County health director who would be the first Muslim U.S. senator, didn't take on the evidence. He took offense. "To bring into question my commitment to the Constitution is really beneath you," he said, calling the question "really quite shameful" (WXYZ debate video).

Rogers is a former FBI agent and Army officer who once chaired the House Intelligence Committee. The hourlong debate at WXYZ-TV in Southfield was the pair's second and last, the station said, with Election Day 13 days away. The seat belongs to retiring Democrat Gary Peters, and it could decide which party runs the Senate next year.

The letter he still won't explain

Rogers' sharpest jab came on an unlikely subject: police funding. "As a matter of fact, he asked the Muslim Brotherhood, excuse me, head Morsi in Egypt, to defund the police there, too. I mean, it's unbelievable," Rogers said (WXYZ debate video).

He was talking about a real document. On Nov. 25, 2012, the Egyptian news site Al-Ahram Gate published a statement from 46 Egyptian-American "leaders" backing President Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood's man in Cairo, days after he handed himself sweeping new powers. "We, leaders of the Egyptian community, support the revolutionary decisions taken by the president, and we call on him to purge the media and the police as quickly as possible," it read. The 33rd signature belonged to "Dr. Abdul Rahman El-Sayed" of New York, then a Columbia medical student, the Washington Free Beacon first reported.

The signers also said they "strongly reject those voices that are courting America and Europe to take a position against the Egyptian regime." In the months that followed, at least six Egyptian reporters were hauled into court on charges like "insulting Islam." The military ousted Morsi in 2013, and Egypt banned the Brotherhood as a terrorist group, per the Free Beacon.

This week even the New York Times confirmed El-Sayed signed the letter while in medical school and reported that his campaign aides declined to answer questions about it (New York Times). The Free Beacon has since reported that at least six other signers donated to his campaigns, at least $25,850 in all, mostly to his Senate run. Picture a job applicant who once wrote a fan letter urging a strongman to shut down his country's newspapers. An employer would ask about it. Voters are asking about it too.

'My family has long been MB'

The family questions keep coming too. El-Sayed has denied any family ties to the Brotherhood. But in 2012 his half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, posted: "Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect," as the New York Times quoted it this week. Rogers' campaign turned them into a video.

On stage Wednesday, El-Sayed brushed it off again. "I've never been a part because my mom, who's a nurse in Missouri, it doesn't make any sense," he said (WXYZ debate video). He has said he wasn't raised by his biological mother. Rogers didn't let it become a story about hurt feelings. "I know you want to make this about you being a victim," he said. "This is about an ideology. An ideology that's banned in five Muslim countries, an ideology that's banned in another six different countries" (WXYZ debate video).

Rogers also pressed the money trail. "So being bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood, having donors to his campaign from Hamas that support Hezbollah, is not a problem?" he asked. A Fox News Digital review found El-Sayed has taken more than $115,000 from at least 41 people who work for or have led the Council on American-Islamic Relations, including his father-in-law, a CAIR-Michigan board member. Federal prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terror-financing case, and Florida and Texas have since designated or labeled it a terrorist organization, Fox reported.

A pattern, Rogers said

Rogers, who spent years as an investigator, framed it the way a background check works: one wrong answer can be a slip, but a string of them is a pattern. "He lied about being a physician," he said on stage. "He lied about being an Egyptian dual citizen." El-Sayed holds a medical degree from Columbia but never finished a residency or held a medical license, PolitiFact found. A 2016 video and a 2014 résumé show him calling himself a dual U.S.-Egyptian citizen, which his campaign now says was an error, Mediaite reported.

On Iran, Rogers said, "My opponent can't even condemn the IRGC, which is the terrorist enforcement arm of Iran, and doesn't believe Iran is any more dangerous than Israel." At their first debate on Oct. 8, El-Sayed refused to say which was the greater threat, calling the question "ridiculous," the Post reported.

And when El-Sayed went after Rogers over corporate donors, Rogers turned it around: "It's a little bit rich to me that my opponent talks about corporate donations. He snuck into Chuck Schumer's office and asked and begged for corporate money, and you see it on TV today. $35 million of corporate PAC money flowing all over this state. It's hypocritical."

Voter ID, ICE and the last 13 days

Election integrity got its moment too. Asked about voter ID and the SAVE Act, El-Sayed said, "Let me be clear this is about voter suppression," and claimed the bill would make women who changed their names dig up birth certificates just to vote. Rogers called asking for ID "very reasonable and rational." During the debate, El-Sayed's own X account posted that America can have a secure border "without a rogue, illegal agency like ICE."

The race is close. El-Sayed leads by about 2 points in the RealClearPolitics average, per the Post, and the latest Marist poll of likely voters had it 50% to 48%, inside the margin of error (Marist). One poll that showed him up 6 came from Wedgewood Polls, the outfit that just admitted its numbers were fake (our report).

Barack Obama rallies in Detroit on Saturday, and President Trump follows on Sunday, the AP reported. Michigan voters now have two weeks to decide whether El-Sayed's answers were good enough. On Wednesday night, the one he gave most often was that the question itself was out of line.