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Over the past few months, I have spoken to over a dozen people who know Rep. Cory Mills. Nearly everyone, I found, dislikes him. Some outright despise him: “repulsive and vile,” “schmuck,” “little bitch.” Others were more formal. “I have no use for people with no honor,” an Idaho firearms instructor who worked with Mills in the Middle East told me. The most blunt was a veteran who once reported to Mills in the Army. He told me of the congressman from Florida: “I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.”
In our divided age, Mills—a bearded 45-year-old man fond of fabric-straining shirts—is the rare unifying figure in politics. Members of both parties have tried to censure him. Republican Rep. Nancy Mace called Mills a “disgrace” and moved to kick him off his committees in the House last year. (She was supported by MAGA Reps. Lauren Boebert and Anna Paulina Luna.) Congressional Democrats have moved to censure him three times.
Rep. Cory Mills (center, R-Fla.) in January 2026Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP
Mills’ detractors can flip through a Rolodex of scandals and red flags. Just in 2025: A woman called 911 about alleged domestic violence by Mills, former associates came forward to claim Mills hired sex workers while on a “rescue mission” abroad, fellow veterans told the press that Mills earned a Bronze Star through stolen valor, and an ex-girlfriend (not the woman who called 911) sought and received a restraining order against Mills.
The congressman has publicly pushed back on some of these scandals. The domestic violence allegation was later retracted, and Mills has defended his military record while also saying he is “not in position to dispute different recollections during chaotic wartime events.”
The congressman also has business problems. Before his election, Mills co-founded an international arms company that court records show made most of its money selling grenades in the Middle East. Trapped under tens of millions of dollars of debt, the company is now in foreclosure proceedings. Mills still maintains a major stake in the firm, despite House committee assignments that pose a direct conflict of interest. Mills sits on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. He’s also a part of the Intelligence and Special Operations Subcommittee for Armed Services—a position that gives Mills access to classified national security briefings.
John Sipher, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked for the CIA for nearly three decades, described Mills as a textbook example of someone who poses a counterintelligence threat. “He’s got financial problems; he’s got problems with dishonesty and ego,” Sipher explained. “If you were giving a security briefing,” Mills could be a case study of “all the things not to do,” he said.
I asked the congressman’s office for an interview last month. Mills’ office never responded. His office also did not respond to a detailed list of questions sent last week.
Given his behavior and record, there is bipartisan concern in Washington that Mills could pose a national security threat, according to a congressional source. The information reported about Mills, they said, makes him vulnerable to malign actors and honeytraps. If the congressman were hired as a staffer, he would need to pass a background investigation to have access to classified information, they explained. “There’s just no way he would qualify,” the source said, adding that they have never heard any Democrat or Republican defend the congressman behind closed doors.
Mills’ personality has not done him any favors, either. Both online and off, he radiates insecurity. His Instagram feed is filled with try-hard posts. (One of many examples: a gym mirror selfie in which Mills suggests that he prefers peace but is prepared to fight “if troubles must come.”) This posturing extends to real life, too. At a congressional hearing, he once joked that it would take nine of his Democratic colleagues for it to be a “fair fight” against someone like him.
Mills insinuates that this hypermasculinity is backed up by a coveted credential: being a veteran of US special operations forces. But there is nothing in his military record to support that claim in any meaningful way. An Army official told me in response to a request for comment that Mills’ personnel files show him only attending—but not completing—a special forces qualification course. As one person who knows Mills explained, “He’s a fake alpha male.”
Despite his many scandals, come November, Mills could be elected to a third term in a district that President Donald Trump won easily. The House Ethics Committee is now investigating him, but it is a process that can be drawn out for months or more. In the meantime, Mills will face voters with Trump’s “Complete and Total Endorsement.” The immediate reason that Republicans have backed him is simple: The GOP wants to protect its slim majority in Congress. But it is also a testament to how much scandal doesn’t matter in Republican politics today.
For this piece, I reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, combed multiple court filings, and interviewed 18 people who have known Mills, from his youth to the present. Those who have interacted with him expressed a mix of bemused outrage and unadulterated disgust about his rise to power. They were incredulous at the idea of him serving in Congress. But they were not surprised by his various scandals. The general picture of Mills that emerged was of an aggressive, bullying, and untrustworthy man. Politicians are often considered smarmy. But to a degree I’ve never experienced before as a reporter, Mills has left behind a trail of former close associates willing to speak out against him on the record.
Mills tells his life story in four easily digestible acts. He was born into a broken home, served honorably in the Army, left and made his fortune in business, then returned to service by running for Congress. Only the first part is true without major caveats.
Mills was born in 1980 and largely raised in Auburndale, Florida, a small city about an hour south of Orlando. His parents were teenagers. His father, Christopher, spent nearly all of Mills’ childhood incarcerated, along with much of Mills’ adulthood. His mother faced legal troubles related to methamphetamines, according to court records. As Mills tells it, he learned the value of a “traditional nuclear family” thanks to grandparents who took him in and prevented him from becoming a “statistic.” He signed up to join the Army in 1998, then reported for duty after finishing high school the next year.
Since entering politics, Mills has summarized his four years of military service with three phrases: “Army 82nd Airborne,” “Iraq/Afghanistan Veteran,” and “JSOC Member” (the acronym for the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite group that oversees much of US special operations forces). Whether those claims were true was initially unclear to me. Then I spoke with Adam Ehrhardt, an Army veteran who now owns a gun store in North Carolina.
“I wouldn’t trust him with nothing. He’s always been that little liar. I mean no one—no one—likes him.”
Ehrhardt told me that he served with Mills for the large majority of the time that the congressman spent on active duty. Both were medics assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. For some of that time, they lived in the same barracks at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. After being made a sergeant, Mills was in charge of Ehrhardt.
Ehrhardt made a point of defending Mills from insinuations by some critics that he may have never deployed to a war zone. That was not true, he said. Mills went to Iraq for a few months in 2003. It was this initial commitment to getting the facts straight that made Ehrhardt’s broader assessment of his former noncommissioned officer particularly brutal. It is hard to overstate Ehrhardt’s contempt for his former sergeant.
“I wouldn’t trust him with nothing. He’s always been that little liar,” he said. “I mean no one—no one—likes him.” Ehrhardt described Mills’ need to lie as “pathological.” He said of their time in Iraq: “My interactions with him—and most everybody’s—was just trash.”
Mills’ current congressional bio says he “served with” JSOC. But Ehrhardt stressed that “at no point in time” was Mills ever a part of Army special operations forces. That is supported by Mills’ service records. The Army official said Mills “attended Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) in 2002 but did not complete the course.”
After a few months in Kuwait and Iraq between February and June 2003, Mills left the Army. He earned an associate’s degree from Florida State College, then was lured by the lucrative world of private military contracting. In 2005, he deployed with a company then known as DynCorp to Afghanistan before transferring to Iraq. (Despite describing himself as an Afghanistan veteran, Mills never served there while in the military.)
Of all the people Mills has wronged, it was former colleagues at DynCorp who have gone the furthest out of their way to expose him. Many of Mills’ DynCorp colleagues had top-tier military backgrounds. The future congressman did not. Instead, Mills made things up, according to four former contractors I spoke with.
Will Kern, a former Marine scout sniper, said Mills claimed not only to have been an elite Army Ranger, but also an Army-trained sniper and special operations forces-qualified medic. (A DynCorp bio for Mills shared with me by one of his former colleagues lists him as having those qualifications—none of which appear in his military records.)
Mills’ bio and behavior did not add up to Kern, but he tried not to ask too many questions. Maybe, Kern thought, Mills wasn’t a fraud but “just a fucking weirdo.” Some of Mills’ other DynCorp colleagues were more charitable. Paul Sovitsky wrote a letter, which Mills has shared online, that describes the congressman as a “tactically and technically sound operator” who did an “outstanding job” on many “high threat missions.” It makes Sovitsky one of the closest things Mills has to a validator. But Sovitsky also made it clear when I called him that he was “no Cory Mills fan.” After noting that humility is the greatest virtue, he described Mills as his “own worst enemy and best self-promoter.”
Jack Jordan, a former Ranger and DynCorp contractor, had a similar view of Mills. He initially saw his younger colleague as being smart, personable, and athletic. But his estimation of Mills declined as they spent more time together in Iraq. On missions, he said, Mills often seemed not like a former special forces operator, but a person playing one in a movie. Jordan came to see Mills as someone who had a fundamental character flaw: He did whatever he thought he could get away with, not what he thought was right.
Like others, Jordan remembered Mills telling him that he was a Ranger. When we spoke, he still thought there was probably at least some truth to the claim. When I told Jordan I’d seen nothing in Mills’ service records to support that, he seemed surprised that Mills would have been quite so brazen. Jordan’s understandable credulity underscored a key component of Mills’ rise: a long-standing willingness to exploit the basic decency we show in trusting one another. (Mills’ congressional office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
James Lang, another former Army Ranger, similarly remembered Mills representing himself as a fellow Ranger when they worked together in Afghanistan. As did Jesse Parks, a Vietnam veteran who described Mills getting called out on the lie by an actual former Ranger while they were in Iraq. “Seriously called out,” Parks added. “Like, ‘Say it again and you’re gonna go home in need of medical attention.’”
Only one of the seven former DynCorp colleagues I interviewed pushed back against the idea that Mills falsely claimed to have been a Ranger. Unlike most of his former colleagues, he agreed to be quoted only on condition of anonymity. He also said he was speaking to me because Mills wanted him to.
In the interview, the former contractor questioned how his and the congressman’s former colleagues recalled so many details about events that happened years ago. I put that question to Parks. Why did he remember Mills’ actions so well? “Well, number one,” Parks replied, “when you’re a Grade A jackass and you do dumb shit and you make everybody look bad, you get remembered.” He summed up Mills by placing him on a bespoke continuum: “He’s a schmuck bordering on being a douchebag.”
Parks and Kern told me that Mills’ time at DynCorp ended abruptly after the company and State Department required additional proof of contractors’ military qualifications. Parks, who supervised the team Mills belonged to in Iraq, said contractors were given months to get that documentation. Despite this, Mills failed to provide it. He remembered giving Mills an ultimatum in 2009: Supply proof of his military record by that evening or be sent home. “He just looked at me,” Parks said.
Soon after, Parks said he got a call from Mills’ shift leader saying that he had disappeared and that his weapons were lying on his bed. As Kern put it, “That little bitch left the US Consulate in the middle of the night because he knew he was busted.” (Mills has denied his former colleagues’ account, saying he left Iraq early “because I wanted to go home with a nice girlfriend.”)
It would not be the last time Mills would be accused of fabricating key parts of his military record to advance his career.
In the early 2010s, following his sudden departure from DynCorp, there was little reason to think Mills was headed toward much success. He was, at that point, a divorced man in his early 30s facing multiple personal financial problems. In 2011, a lien was placed on him for more than $13,000 of unpaid federal taxes, according to Florida records. Soon after, another lien was filed in Washington, DC, for more than $33,000 of overdue federal taxes.
At the time, Mills was working for a US government contractor in Virginia. Mills once again portrayed himself as an ex-Army Ranger, according to a former colleague. The former colleague also remembered another story about Mills.
In 2014, Mills was on the verge of marrying his second wife, Rana Al Saadi, an Iraqi immigrant who had previously worked for the US State Department as a cultural adviser. The former colleague recalls that Mills strongly suggested at the time that he had converted to Islam as part of the relationship. Former DynCorp colleagues have also said they remember Mills saying he’d converted, and Virginia records show that Mills and Al Saadi were married in Virginia by an imam.
“I was really fucking mad because it felt like my medic was the hero and this guy is stealing the tin off of his chest to advance his own political career.”
Mills’ reported conversion to Islam has been seized on by right-wing critics who sometimes post fake photos of him in traditional Muslim garb. Mills has since said he was married by an imam only to make it easier for his wife to travel back to Iraq. And the congressman now makes a point of highlighting his Christian faith. He has likened his entry into the political arena to the prophet Isaiah telling God to “send me!”
Shortly before his second marriage, Mills left the contracting firm. He launched his own business with Al Saadi—Pacem Solutions—the same month. At first, the firm could have been mistaken for another DC-area company selling services to NGOs and government clients. But it has since become clear that the heart of the business was different. Pacem, court records show, was an arms dealer specializing in selling grenades abroad.
In 2015, a spinoff company called Pacem Defense was formed in Virginia. That year, as previously reported by Business Insider, records show that Pacem was part of a $228 million arms deal with the Iraqi government. As the independent journalist Seth Hettena reported, Pacem boasted on its website about sending an “international customer” more than 2 million 40mm explosive rounds designed to be shot from grenade launchers.
The massive 2015 grenade deal with Iraq coincides with a dramatic shift in Mills’ financial position. Soon after the deal went through, he purchased a home in Virginia for more than $1.3 million. Less than two years later, the couple bought a mansion in the state for more than $4 million, according to public records. When the couple later tried to sell it, a listing boasted that the roughly 11,000-square-foot home included a 1,500-bottle wine cellar, a “posh cinema,” and a “new pool with spa.” It was a major upgrade from the DC apartment Mills had been living in a few years before.
“You marry the first time for love,” Jordan, the former DynCorp co-worker, recalled hearing Mills say near the time of his first divorce in 2008, “and the second [time] for money.”
Mills has framed himself as a successful businessman. But Pacem’s story is hardly flattering.
I initially discovered Pacem’s severe financial problems due to an ironic move from Mills’ company: It demanded government aid that multiple courts have since found it did not deserve. Specifically, Pacem sued the Small Business Administration in 2023 for millions of dollars of Covid-era federal funding that it claimed to have been wrongfully denied. To defend itself, the SBA filed a host of internal Pacem bank documents in federal court. The documents show that Mills’ arms business was hemorrhaging millions in cash throughout 2018 and 2019. They also make clear that Mills’ company was in disarray when he decided to fail up to Congress.
In the documents, Mills and Pacem can be seen repeatedly trying to convince their lender that better times and massive profits were just around the corner. Most of the money was supposed to come from grenade deals with Saudi Arabia and Iraq that Pacem said kept getting delayed. In April 2020, Pacem told its bank that good news was potentially on the horizon because Saudi Arabia might need ammunition to sell to a partner in the Middle East. As an internal bank update put it: “Situation with Yemen ([Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] will be supplying ammunition) may increase M430A1 [grenade] quantity.”
This implied Pacem was planning to profit from a horrific military campaign. Amnesty International found that attacks in Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition were responsible for “a long string of potential war crimes.” For Pacem, the calculus appeared simpler: more war, more money. (Pacem officials did not respond to a request for comment.)
At the time, Mills had also recently begun laying the groundwork for his political career. In November 2019, shortly after initially failing to pay back his company’s government-backed loan, Mills started spreading money around the Republican Party. In one two-day period, he made 20 separate contributions totaling nearly $100,000. It was the first time he’d ever made federal political contributions, according to public records.
The only law Mills has passed renamed a post office in his district.
The vast majority of the money went to the National Republican Congressional Committee, then–House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and a political action committee affiliated with GOP leadership. Within weeks of donating to McCarthy, Mills started writing a foreign policy column called “Middle East Downrange” for the right-wing outlet Newsmax. As part of an apparent bid to build a public persona, Mills also started appearing on the outlet’s cable channel as a talking head, where he was introduced as a “decorated US Army combat veteran,” Pacem’s founder, and a “Mideast analyst.” With the benefit of hindsight, it appears to have been an obvious attempt to grease the wheels for an impending campaign.
Mills’ donations and media commentary gave the impression of a moneyed man on the rise. In reality, he was facing increasingly severe financial trouble. On March 31, 2021, Pacem and its lender entered a “forbearance agreement” after identifying five “immediate and uncurable events of default.” According to court records, Pacem still owed $4.65 million of its $5 million loan, and Mills’ and Al Saadi’s mansion, which served as collateral for the loan, was in jeopardy of foreclosure if they couldn’t find a way out.
One day later, on April 1, the initial paperwork for Mills’ congressional run was filed with the Federal Election Commission. “I’m tired of people in politics not being transparent,” Mills said in announcing his bid. “It is time to restore transparency, accountability, and to be what you are, a representative of the people, not a representative of your party.”
On the campaign trail, Mills cut a wholesome image. In one radio interview with a pastor, he framed his run as a simple continuation of a life of service. When it came to his business, he suggested that Pacem primarily supported US law enforcement. And in response to a question about his family, he volunteered that he was married with two kids and talking with his wife about having a third.
“We want a little girl,” Mills explained. “A girl just lights up the house.”
It sounded nice, but according to Florida court records, Mills had already begun a relationship with a woman nearly two decades his junior, who would later seek a restraining order against him.
Mills tried to play up a hero image despite his rocky personal life during the campaign. In the summer of 2021, he announced what was billed as a “rescue mission” to save a family stuck in Afghanistan. The effort allowed Mills to make the rounds on Fox News, where he cast himself as the competent foil to a feckless Biden administration. But independent journalist Roger Sollenberger, who has covered Mills extensively, recently uncovered a more unsettling side of the journey. Three sources told Sollenberger that Mills hired sex workers multiple times while in Tbilisi, Georgia, en route to Afghanistan. “It was every night,” one of the sources said.
They worried that Mills’ behavior posed a security threat. “This shit was so fucking bananas that I had trouble computing,” a person who was in Georgia with Mills told Sollenberger. “I’ve been in a lot of weird places and seen a lot of weird stuff, [but] I have never seen anything as aggressively blatant as him.”
None of these transgressions came out during the primary. Instead, Mills made national news in an ad that responded to a report that one of his companies had sold tear gas used against Black Lives Matter protesters. In it, Mills glorified his company’s work as he pumped rounds out of a grenade launcher. Then he went directly to camera with the punchline: “If the media wants to shed some real tears, I can help them out with that.”
In a red district, Mills positioned himself as a Trump loyalist. He claimed to have spoken at “the first” Stop the Steal rally and argued that President Joe Biden was not the legitimate president. Still, he was not actually the most right-wing candidate in the primary. That distinction went to a rival named Anthony Sabatini, who was endorsed by former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and later made headlines for defending his decision to quote the late Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.
In contrast to Sabatini’s pure MAGA, Mills mixed Trumpian rhetoric with an older GOP archetype: the Ronald Reagan-quoting businessman. Like Republicans of yore, he often appeared most comfortable talking about being a “constitutionalist” and boasting about supposed private-sector credentials. As he put it in one interview: “I’m a job creator—not a job seeker. I know what it’s like to sign the front of the check, not the back of the check.”
That was misleading at best. Initially during the campaign, Mills did not seem to have that much money to throw around in support of his campaign. (His first two loans to his campaign totaled only $1,500.) Then Pacem struck a deal with a Canadian firm that markets itself as a resource for companies with “poor financial performance.” Under the arrangement, a Canadian debt fund would pay off the balance on Pacem’s $5 million SBA loan, while also giving Pacem access to large amounts of additional cash. Soon after, Mills made a $200,000 loan to his campaign. He would end up loaning more than $1.8 million of “personal funds” to his campaign during the primary. (FEC commissioners voted in 2024 to dismiss a complaint that alleged Mills’ campaign self-funding came from loans to Pacem.)
The reality of Mills’ business problems was not known during his initial campaign. In the August 2022 primary, Mills—whose personal loans to his campaign came to more than Sabatini’s entire budget—prevailed by 14 points. In November, he won the general election handily. Soon after, he headed up to New York to be honored at a black-tie Republican gala alongside another new member of Congress, George Santos.
Mills alienated people from the start in Washington.
Four days after being sworn in, the new congressman celebrated the departure of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Twitter with a joke about her husband. “Finally one less gavel in Pelosi’s house for Paul to fight with in his underwear,” he wrote around 3 a.m., referencing the attack that nearly killed Pelosi’s husband. Two weeks later, he sent fellow representatives inert versions of 40mm grenades stamped with a GOP elephant. The response from across the aisle was a mix of disbelief and disgust. “Not even George Santos could make this stuff up,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) wrote, presumably unaware of just how many similarities there were between the two Republican freshmen.
Despite his initial antics, Mills maintained a relatively low profile for most of his first term. But behind the scenes, he reportedly engaged in behavior that concerned aides and colleagues. Two congressional sources were told that Mills joined a group of legislators in Dublin in 2023, in part to watch a Navy-Notre Dame football game. The sources heard from multiple people that Mills drunkenly punched someone on the trip. One of the sources said they heard that Mills “sucker punched” someone while in Ireland before running away like a “coward.” (Asked about Mills’ alleged conduct, a Navy spokesperson referred questions to Mills’ office, which did not respond to an interview request or request for comment.)
During his first term, FEC records also show Mills’ campaign using donations to pay for luxury hotels across the country. That included $1,696 at the Venetian in Las Vegas; $4,000 at the Phoenician in Scottsdale, Arizona; more than $10,000 at hotels near Mar-a-Lago in Florida; and $5,711 at a Fairmont in Puerto Rico. All the while, Mills’ company was sinking deeper into debt.
Mills’ legislative record was less impressive than his travels. One of the few times he made news was for filing articles of impeachment against Biden in May 2024. The justification was that Biden had threatened to withhold some weapons if Israel invaded Rafah in Gaza—a policy that Mills absurdly depicted as a corrupt “quid pro quo” by Biden. The only Mills legislation that has ever become law renamed a post office in his district.
By the time Mills’ reelection campaign geared up in 2024, his more observant critics were already on to him. Jade Murray, a conservative businesswoman in Florida, had set up a website detailing Mills’ many apparent fabrications about his military service with the help of some former DynCorp contractors.
Mills fought back in a 2024 Florida newspaper article that ran under the headline, “With Congressman Cory Mills facing accusations of stolen valor, Army confirms medals.” As part of the article, Mills produced a form authorized by retired Brig. General Arnold Gordon-Bray, who recommended him for the Bronze Star. The recommendation claimed that Mills came to the aid of two comrades “while under intense enemy fire” during a battle in Iraq. It added that Mills “applied emergency life saving medical care to both” soldiers at “great risk to his own life.”
Since then, the story of the Bronze Star has fallen apart. Joe Heit, one of the men whom Mills claims to have helped, told the outlet Notus last year that Mills “didn’t save my life.” When I spoke with Heit in January, he told me that it was impossible for Mills to have saved him for a simple reason: He did not sustain any life-threatening injuries during the battle. What really happened, Heit said—and reporting from the Washington Post from 2004 backs up—was that a bullet went through his helmet but did not enter his skull. Before it became clear that he had suffered only minor injuries, the platoon’s medic, Alan Babin, rushed to Heit’s aid. Babin was shot and nearly killed trying to save Heit.
That’s what so angered Heit when he first learned that Mills was claiming to have saved both his and Babin’s lives. “I was really fucking mad because it felt like my medic was the hero,” Heit explained, “and this guy is stealing the tin off of his chest to advance his own political career.”
Heit said Mills’ claims were especially bizarre for another reason. Heit told me he has no memory of ever meeting the congressman. Chris Painter, Heit’s platoon sergeant, corroborated Heit’s account based on his experience at the battle. “I can pretty much confirm 100% Cory Mills was not up at the bridges at the location of…everything,” he told Notus via text last year. Gabriel Gowell, another member of Heit’s platoon, told me he has no memory of seeing Mills before or after the battle, though he added it would have made sense for Mills to have come to help exfiltrate Heit and Babin, given his role with the headquarters company.
Rosie Babin told Notus that her son, who has had over 70 abdominal surgeries and five brain surgeries to treat the grievous wounds he suffered in Iraq, has no memory of the battle. It leaves Mills as the only alleged witness of his own broadly refuted claims of valor during the battle. (“I was on the ground,” Mills has said in defense. “It was a chaotic day and understandable that others may have different recollections of events.”)
Mills’ Bronze Star recommendation form also states that, during a second battle, the future congressman bounded forward under “murderous enemy fire” to rescue a third comrade. The story is dramatic: It claims that after Sgt. First Class Joe Ferrand was “grabbed by an enemy insurgent,” Mills “threw himself at the enemy insurgent and subdued him, saving the life of SFC Ferrand.”
The problem for Mills is that Ferrand has sworn the heroic tale is made up. It is “false and a [f]abrication,” Ferrand said in a handwritten statement I reviewed that has been shared with congressional investigators. “The act never took place. The event never happened.” (When Notus first reported on Ferrand’s letter last year, Mills said he “was on the ground, but I’m not in position to dispute different recollections during chaotic wartime events.” Ferrand did not respond to a request for comment.)
A statement written by Joe Ferrand was part of a complaint submitted to congressional investigators in 2025. In the note, he calls some claims by Mills of valor in battle a “fabrication.” Ferrand did not respond to a request for comment.Obtained by Mother Jones
Further suspicion is raised by text at the bottom of Mills’ Bronze Star recommendation. The form dates the document to April 2021 or later—about 18 years after the events it describes. Gordon-Bray, the retired general who Mills says put him up for a Bronze Star, told me he authorized the form to be signed on his behalf. He remembered doing so long after the events in question, but did not recall the year. Gordon-Bray also said he did not review its contents and had no personal knowledge of the acts claimed in it.
Recently published documents from Mills’ personnel file in the Army’s Freedom of Information Act Library shed further light on what happened. In March 2024, the Army changed Mills’ service records to correct an anomaly: He had not received a Bronze Star, according to the records, but his discharge papers showed him getting one. So, the Army deleted the Bronze Star from his records and replaced it with the lesser Army Commendation Medal that Mills did actually receive in 2003. Then, in June 2024, there was another change. The congressman was given a Bronze Star in place of the Commendation Medal, apparently based on the now broadly refuted award nomination form sent on his behalf. (Mills has previously declined to say when the recommendation was submitted; an Army official did not respond to an inquiry about when the form was received.)
Despite the holes in the congressman’s story, Mills survived the initial efforts to impeach his character, winning his August 2024 primary by more than 60 points. From there, he floated toward another easy general election victory. His rise was captured in a fawning pre-election conversation in which right-wing host Glenn Beck began by calling Mills a “superhero,” as well as the “Captain America of Congress” and the “real-life Batman, Superman.”
After seeing Mills’ oceanfront patio in the background of his video feed, Beck went on to ask Mills with awe, “How did you get so rich?” The property is identifiable as a $12,000-per-month rental that Mills moved into in 2024. Unusually for a congressman, Mills has never owned property in his district, according to public records. He previously lived in another property in the district that was marketed online as a temporary rental.
Around this time, there was more good news for Mills. Not only did he get reelected, but Trump won for a second time and opened up a Florida Senate seat by picking Marco Rubio for secretary of state. Mills told reporters in the state that he would almost certainly try to fill it. A Politico article noting his likely Senate bid didn’t mention any red flags or scandals standing in the way.
At the start of his second term, Mills appeared to be on the rise within the GOP. His personal life was another matter. By early 2025, the congressman was separated from his second wife and sharing a Florida home with Lindsey Langston, his long-term girlfriend who had recently been crowned Miss United States. (The two began dating in 2021, when Mills was in his early 40s and Langston was 22.) They had discussed marriage and the potential for having kids of their own, Langston later testified.
But according to Langston, Mills was also in a darker place than his public image suggested. She later recalled that Mills had FaceTimed her crying and saying that “he didn’t want to be here anymore.” Texts and images he sent showed him drinking and indicating that “the bourbon’s not working,” Langston later testified. In one video he shared Mills was “cleaning a firearm and drinking alcohol,” according to testimony from his former partner. (Langston’s attorney did not respond to interview requests.)
Eventually, Langston concluded that Mills was “mentally unstable” and feared for his well-being enough to call his staff to conduct what she has described as a wellness check. She’d been to his DC penthouse apartment and knew that he had “access to a balcony,” as well as access to “loaded weapons at all times.”
As Langston tried to help Mills, she believed that they were in a monogamous relationship. But in late February 2025, Langston saw news reports from Washington that shocked her. Police had responded to a 911 call reporting an alleged assault at Mills’ penthouse in the city. The call had been made by Sarah Raviani, a then–27-year-old co-founder of “Iranians for Trump” who was described in the media as Mills’ “live-in girlfriend” in DC.
A police report reviewed by NBC 4 stated that Mills had “grabbed [Raviani], shoved her, and pushed her out of the door.” The police report also said Mills had instructed Raviani to lie about the alleged incident. (Two days later, DC prosecutors declined to charge Mills with misdemeanor assault after Raviani retracted all allegations against the congressman.)
Soon after, Langston ended the relationship, according to court records. But even after they stopped dating, Mills repeatedly threatened Langston and said he would kill anyone she dated, according to court records and testimony. He also wrote multiple menacing messages to Langston between May and June 2025. “May want to tell every guy you date that if we run into each at any point. Strap up cowboy,” Mills wrote. Multiple times, he implied potentially sending videos of sexual content recorded during their relationship to a future partner: “I can send him a few videos of you as well[.] Oh, I still have them” and “Thank [sic] again for the videos.” Langston reported Mills’ threats to police in Florida, then filed for a restraining order against Mills in August.
Messages from Mills to Langston included in the ruling by a Florida judge that led to a restraining order against the congressman.Court records
In early and late September, Langston and Mills testified in the case. The video recordings of the hearings, which run over three hours in total, provide a rare opportunity to observe a sitting member of Congress being grilled under oath. The general impression they leave is of a cornered man making dubious—if not definitively false—claims while maintaining a posture of “Who, me?” innocence.
In arguing for the restraining order, Langston’s attorney stressed that she’d asked Mills to stop contacting her 11 times. The often wrenching testimony from Langston made clear that she had suffered severe distress as a result of Mills’ misconduct. “Please help me. Someone please help me,” Langston pleaded in tears. “Because I don’t know what to do and I’m scared. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Mills, by contrast, nonsensically described his threatening behavior as being part of a “reconciliation” or “unwinding” process with Langston. When it came to sending videos, he told his lawyer that he’d been thinking of sending Langston’s future partners a clip of her wearing an apron in their kitchen—not anything explicit. The warning that people she dated should “strap up, cowboy” had nothing to do with guns in Mills’ telling. It was, he claimed, a common expression in the rodeo world. It came to him because he’d previously competed as a rider, Mills said. (There is no public record of the congressman competing in rodeos.)
Under cross-examination by Langston’s lawyer, Mills’ credibility truly imploded. In a memorable exchange, the congressman could not accurately answer questions about his own marital status.
“When [were] divorce proceedings filed?” a lawyer asked. Mills claimed that the divorce “hadn’t been filed yet.” The lawyer asked again, “When, if at ever, has your divorce proceedings been filed?” Mills finally responded: “Well, they still have not [been] filed.” This was a trap. Langston’s lawyer was holding his divorce paperwork in her hand.
There should be little doubt that Mills knew he was (and is) in divorce proceedings—and thus testified falsely under oath. Virginia court records show his lawyer responding in detail to Al Saadi’s divorce complaint seeking primary custody of their son weeks before Mills claimed in Florida court that nothing had been filed.
Nor were the relationships with Raviani and Langston the only ones that Mills reportedly pursued. As part of the proceedings, Langston’s attorney suggested that Mills “sprinkled in a relationship” with a third woman. Republican congressional candidate Gregory Kunkle has also claimed that Mills was involved with a fourth woman, former Rep. Mayra Flores, who is running against Kunkle in a Texas primary this year. Kunkle has said Mills called him directly to threaten to “get involved” in the primary if he continued to talk about the alleged relationship. (Flores’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
In October, a Florida judge ruled that Mills had harassed and subjected Langston to “dating violence” via cyberstalking after finding the congressman’s testimony about the explicit videos not “to be truthful.” He placed a temporary restraining order on Mills that prohibited him from contacting Langston for the remainder of 2025.
Last November, it looked like Mills’ past had finally caught up with him.
Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican who has a number of her own scandals, had come to loathe him. The feud stemmed in part from Mills’ decision not to back Mace in censuring Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) last year. Since then, Mace has gone after Mills viciously—including by sharing doctored images of him wearing a Muslim prayer cap and a military jacket overflowing with fake medals.
Mace’s main line of attack was a censure motion that would strip Mills of his committee assignments. Instead of censuring Mills, the House voted to send the matter to the Ethics Committee, which is now investigating Mills on an open-ended timeline. Its investigation covers a wide range of potential misbehavior, including campaign finance law violations, sexual misconduct, and improper solicitation of gifts.
As the committee proceeds, Pacem faces a potential existential crisis, too. Its Canadian lender has now submitted a complaint in Florida court to foreclose on the company’s manufacturing and training facility in the state. A filing in the case states that Pacem owes more than $66 million. Nearly half of that is unpaid interest. Pacem has defended itself by arguing, in part, that a foreign company gaining control of the “weapons of war” at its Florida manufacturing facility poses national security concerns. Its lender has replied by calling Pacem’s argument “immaterial, impertinent, [and] scandalous,” adding: “Enforcement of a mortgage and guaranty following default does not violate public policy.”
An excerpt from a Florida lawsuit brought against Pacem shows more than $66 million in debt.Court records
Mills has tried to distance himself from Pacem. A lawyer for the company told Sollenberger last year that Mills has “formally stepped back from any role in the management” of Pacem entities. In August, Mills stated in his congressional financial disclosure in August that his various corporate holdings are now managed by the “CM Blind Trust.”
Kedric Payne, vice president and general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, said it does not make sense for Mills to report owning specific percentages of companies on his financial disclosure form while also claiming those assets are in a blind trust. “If you can see what your holdings are, it is not a blind trust,” he explained. “But more importantly is that this blind trust does not appear to have been approved by the Ethics Committee.”
“I’ve never seen any member of Congress call something a blind trust on their financial disclosure report that wasn’t a blind trust,” Payne added. “That’s a very large red flag that something is not right.”
The congressman’s reelection funding is also unusual. Since late March, nearly half of the money raised by his two campaign funds has come from donors with Arab surnames, most of whom appear to be Syrian American. Together, the more than 80 donations they made total more than $200,000. The first tranche of donations came a few weeks before Mills traveled to Syria in April; the second soon after he left.
Saurav Ghosh, director for federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, noted that while the uptick in donations from one group is “peculiar,” there is an “above-board” explanation in which Mills is simply being rewarded for taking stances supported by some Syrian Americans.
But the trip still raises concerns about conflicts of interest beyond campaign finance law. Unlike other members of Congress who have recently been to Syria, Mills has not submitted a report to Congress about a second trip that he took to Syria in September. Also, unlike those members, Mills arrived in Syria as the co-founder of an arms company that was in desperate need of cash and that might one day wish to sell weapons in the country. He also sits on two congressional committees that will help determine the nature of the relationship between the United States and the Syrian government that took power after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in 2024.
As Pacem struggled, the firm indefinitely furloughed many of its production workers late last year. When I spoke with one of those employees in December, he told me that he was blindsided and that he had not known his employer had been in financial distress for years. He said he and his colleagues weren’t eligible for severance because they’d been furloughed instead of laid off. He was looking for a new job and facing the unpleasant reality of being out of work just before the holidays.
Mills was having a more glamorous holiday season, attending a White House Christmas party featuring entertainment by the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
In photos Mills posted on X to document the “honor” of attending, he stands next to smiling Cabinet secretaries. In another, he appears solo in front of a Christmas tree, joined only by the company of a gold-rimmed champagne flute. “Thank you, President Trump,” Mills wrote, “for a beautiful evening.”
