GOP Congressman Cory Mills' Incredible Saga of Hunting Terrorists and Fighting America's Enemies Toe-to-Toe in the World's Most Hellish War Zones Launched His Political Career. But Is It True?

Part I: Mills account is disputed by former military officials and veterans. One skeptic obtained his Army records, which Mills hasn't released - apparently for very good reasons.

Retired US Army Sergeant Bobby Oller, a disabled combat veteran, has posted extensive material he obtained at CoryMillsWatch.com, including Army files Mills hasn’t made public to disprove his critic. Image from website/public domain.

Since his first run for political office in 2022 when he won a seat in the House of Representatives, Florida Republican Congressman Cory Mills has built his image around his steadfast dedication to the country, as exemplified by the long period he “hunted down terrorists to keep our shores and freedoms safe” while deployed in war zones around the world for the US Army. Mills often talks about his harrowing seven years in Iraq, when he was awarded a Bronze Star for taking part in combat operations during the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, and narrowly escaped death during the post-war occupation when he was “blown up twice” by roadside bombs.

“After you take a hit like that, you don’t know if you’re going to survive or not,” Mills – who also served in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Pakistan, and Somalia, among other places – recounted in an ad for his reelection campaign last year. “Would you take a hit like that for your country? Would you risk your life for the Constitution?”

The congressman’s message resonates in Florida’s 7th congressional district, which is home to tens of thousands of veterans. After a close shave in the GOP primary during his 2022 campaign, which the Orlando Sentinel said he wouldn’t have won if not for “his military backstory,” Mills won the general election in a cakewalk and he cruised to victory again last year.

It helps that Mills isn’t only a hero on the battlefield, but a multimillionaire businessman as well. After returning home from his final overseas deployment in 2014, Mills and his wife, Rana Alsaadi, an Iraqi war refugee, co-founded Washington, DC-based PACEM Solutions, which sells riot-control gear to law enforcement and security agencies at home and abroad. Thanks to bountiful corporate profits, Mills was able to self-finance the lion’s share of the campaign costs during his initial bid for office and outspend his two Democratic opponents by a combined $4 million to $330,000.

PACEM’s success also helped Mills and Alsaadi buy a $4.4 million gated estate in the Virginia suburbs outside of Washington. When he’s in Florida on political business, the congressman shacks up at a lavish property just off the ocean in New Smyrna Beach.

A close ally of President Donald Trump, who appointed him to the Defense Business Board during the tail end of his first stretch at the White House, Mills sent a welcoming gift of commemorative grenades embossed with an elephant to his House colleagues upon being inaugurated to congress in January of 2023, which didn’t go over well with Democratic lawmakers. “Not even George Santos could make this stuff up,” remarked Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes.

Over the succeeding two years, Mills has relentlessly polished his brand as an alpha male warrior and overall “badass,” as he was once described by Matt Gaetz, his former colleague in Florida’s congressional delegation. The congressman uses his twin perches on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees to amplify his demand for stepped up efforts to confront China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran – the global quartet of official US enemies in the “Axis of Evil” Hall of Fame – and “their terrorist proxies.”

Mills also emits near daily warnings about the growing threat of a blitzkrieg invasion by the army of tired, poor, brown huddled masses the “Biden regime” rolled out a red carpet for on the US-Mexico frontier. Earlier this year, Mills said he was proud to support President Trump’s efforts to “secure the border and end the flood of drugs, crime [and] terror...that has plagued our nation for the last four years.”

Nor is Mills afraid to take on the military brass, as he demonstrated during a congressional hearing about how anti-abortion groups had been included on a list of potential terrorist organizations on a list used in coursework for a military training program. “I don’t think you’re deserving of four stars,” Mills told Army Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Patrick Matlock, who he accused of dodging questions about the list, which included the Earth Liberation Front and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and was drawn up by a low-level employee without the approval of senior military officials.

Shortly after the House reconvened in January, Mills announced he was already making plans to run for the Senate next year.” You can probably guarantee my hat is going to be thrown in the ring,” he declared. His entire reason for embarking on a political career was to be as “effective as possible,” he explained, and he felt sure he’d have a better chance to “deliver on the promises” he made to Florida voters in the upper chamber of congress.

Since then, Mills’ blossoming career prospects and reputation as a warrior have both become murkier. On February 19, a 27-year-old woman called for help from the local police in Washington, saying her “significant other for over a year” – Mills, it soon emerged – had “grabbed her, shoved her, and pushed her out of the door,” according to the initial report filed by the responding officer.

Mills said via an unnamed press spokesperson that he “vehemently denie[d] any wrongdoing,” and the woman recanted her account, which the congressman cites as evidence that bolsters his claim. However, the first police report about the case, which reportedly remains under investigation, said the alleged victim had "bruises on her arm which appeared fresh" and that she let officers listen in on a phone call with her significant other, who “instruct[ed] her to lie about the origin of her bruises.”

Mills often cites his years in Iraq as an example of his valor on the battlefield, as in this tweet that refers to one of the two times he was “blown up in Iraq” while defending the American Way of Life overseas. Public domain.

Meanwhile, questions remain unanswered about Mills’ version of his military service, which has drawn skepticism in a few Florida news outlets, most notably the Orlando Sentinel, and have been challenged by military officials and veterans. Among his strongest critics are soldiers who say they were at the scene of events that Mills depicts as displays of battlefield heroism and deride the congressman's accounts as fabrications, including his dramatic story about the bloody battle in Iraq that led the Army to honor him with the Bronze Star, and his oft-repeated claims about being “blown up twice” by roadside bombs.

During the early years of the “global war on terror,” retired US Army Sergeant Bobby Oller, a disabled combat veteran, deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, the unit Mills served in during the period he did. Oller, who lives in Texas, didn’t meet Mills when they were in the Army and knew little about him or his war stories until he heard him on Fox News one day “spouting off” tales about his military service that instantly triggered his bullshit detector. After watching a handful of Mills’ campaign ads and hearing him share other dramatic details about his battlefield experience, his suspicions shot up further.

“I went to asking guys from his unit and platoon, it’s not a big circle,” Oller told me. No one he spoke to who had first-hand knowledge vouched for Mills and some flat out called him a fraud. One of the people he called was a close friend Oller had known since they roomed together at Fort Bragg, where the 82nd Airborne is based, and worked for Dyncorp in Iraq after he left the Army, and supervised Mills when he was hired by the company as well. Oller remembered his friend mock Mills a few times, but he couldn’t recall the details. “I wasn’t paying attention,” he said “He’s like, ‘That’s the guy I’ve been trying tell you about’.”

Oller kept digging into the situation and discovered more and more evidence, including information he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act that Mills has not made public to prove the truthfulness of the narrative he tells about his military history, including the congressman’s Official Military Personnel File and DD 214 form, a post-discharge Report of Separation that contains the full record of service members’ time in the military and every piece of information they might need to verify it when the apply for “benefits, retirement, employment and membership in veterans' organizations.” Oller has posted a huge amount of the material he discovered at CoryMillsWatch.com and he sent me a lot of additional documentation he obtained, including witness statements from soldiers who served with Mills that accuse him of fabricating key details of about his military service – which he used as the launchpad for his political career – out of whole cloth.

In fact, based on the available evidence, including the congressman’s DD 214 and personnel file, Mills never took part in combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else, and despite to the contrary of his dramatic claims about hunting terrorists and fighting the enemy toe-to-toe on the battlefield, he was a mainly a medic and ambulance driver and spent the majority of his time in the Army at military installations in the US.

The only countries it’s clear he deployed to were Kosovo on a humanitarian mission in 2001, 18 months after the war in the country ended, and Kuwait shortly before the 2003 US invasion. It further appears Mills shouldn’t have received a Bronze Medal because he never set foot foot in Iraq until after his discharge – other members of the 82nd Airborne fought there but he remained in Kuwait – when he went to work for Dyncorp in 2005, two years after he returned to Florida following a brief stop at Fort Bragg to out-process from the Army.

Mills DD 214 shows he was only in the Army for four years and spent far more time employed by private defense companies and an NGO after his discharge, including periods he talks about that form the basis of tales that, as he tells them, appear to have taken place during his military service.

As an editorial published last October in the Orlando Sentinel stated, Mills’ version of his combat years “rarely differentiates between his actual military service and his time working for contractors.“ The newspaper interviewed retired Major General Randy Manner, a former deputy commanding general of the US 3rd Army in Kuwait, who said, “He wasn’t doing it for the Constitution. He was doing it for the Benjamins.”

Blurring the line between his military service and for-profit business employment significantly alters the reality of Mills’ story. His story is further skewed because, according to his official record and other documents, the facts typically didn’t unfold the way the congressman depicts things when he’s talking about his work with private contractors either.

Mills – whose office hasn’t responded to requests for comment for this story, but I’ll keep asking and include the response if I get one – issued a statement to the Sentinel denying allegations that he’d been less than forthcoming in describing his military service. “I received awards from the Army…and campaign medals recognizing my overseas service for the US government across the armed services, the State Department, and other agencies.” He’s described his critics as politically-motivated liberals or otherwise out to get him.

Oller stands by his claims and evidence and evidence he’s compiled, and some of the most important documents he’s obtained have been authenticated by independent sources or haven’t been challenged by Mills or anyone else, including the DD 214 and his Army personnel file. “There’s nothing personal about this and it’s not about politics, I’m a very, very conservative Republican,” Oller told me. “I’m angry because he made up the story and keeps lying and bragging about it.”

Coming in Part II: Mills says his battlefield skills have been tested in war zones around the globe. Based on documents cited by critics and accounts from witnesses who say they served with Mills, the congressman’s combat war stories don’t add up.