Two Congressmen Resigned After Accusations of Misconduct Against Women. Another Remains.

At the start of this week, there were three men in Congress whose reputations had imploded after being accused of misconduct against women: Reps. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). On Tuesday, Gonzales and Swalwell resigned rather than face potential expulsion. Mills is different. He is hanging on despite facing a staggering number of scandals.

As I reported in a profile of Mills in February, the Florida congressman has been accused of hiring sex workers while on a “rescue mission” overseas, punching someone in Ireland while serving in Congress, earning a Bronze Star through false claims about saving the lives of multiple former Army comrades in Iraq, and of threatening to release sexually explicit content of an ex-girlfriend. In October, a Florida judge placed a temporary restraining order on Mills after finding that he subjected that ex-girlfriend to “dating violence” via cyberstalking. (Mills was also implicated earlier in 2025 in an alleged assault involving a different girlfriend, although the allegation was later retracted.)

Mills has gotten off surprisingly easy for someone facing thoroughly documented accusations. But that is now starting to shift. “I’m glad that Eric Swalwell is leaving. I’m glad that Tony Gonzales is leaving,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said earlier this week. “Frankly, I think Cory Mills should probably be on that list as well.” Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) said bluntly about Mills on Tuesday, “He should be expelled.”

Republicans have been more interested in removing Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.), who was indicted in November by a federal grand jury. The indictment alleges that she and her brother stole about $5 million in FEMA funding and then used some of that money to make illegal straw donations to her congressional campaign. In late March, the adjudicatory subcommittee of the House Ethics Committee found a pattern of “progressive and compounding corruption” on Cherfilus-McCormick’s part. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Tuesday that he believes House members will expel the Florida Democrat.

Mills is facing his own ethics committee investigation, but it is unclear when that will be completed. Politico reported this week that key figures in both parties are signaling that they will wait until the investigation is finished before deciding whether to punish Mills. Democrats and Republicans in the House could end up choosing to expel both Mills and Cherfilus-McCormick at once. Like the back-to-back resignations of Gonzales and Swalwell, removing the two Florida representatives would not impact the balance of power in the House, where Republicans now have a narrow majority.

Mills tried to defend himself this week by saying that he does not “fall into the category of Swalwell and Gonzales” because he is not married and has not been accused of sexually harassing members of his own congressional staff. (He was in divorce proceedings with his second wife as recently as this February.) He added that he has never been arrested and has “never gone to any proceedings.” Instead, he suggested that the restraining order placed on him in October was the result of “essentially just something where it was a bad breakup.”

That is not what Florida Judge Fred Koberlein Jr. found in October after Mills’ ex-girlfriend Lindsey Langston sought protection from the Florida congressman. According to court testimony, Langston ended their relationship in early 2025 after she learned that Mills was cheating on her through news stories reporting that the congressman had been implicated in an alleged domestic dispute with another woman. As I wrote in February:

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

Mills, Langston, and their attorneys spent more than three hours in court during two hearings in September. “Please help me. Someone please help me,” Langston pleaded in tears while testifying. “Because I don’t know what to do and I’m scared. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Mills, for his part, falsely told Langston’s lawyer that no divorce proceedings had been filed in relation to his marriage to his second wife. Unfortunately for Mills’ credibility, Langston’s attorney was holding his divorce paperwork in her hand. In granting the temporary restraining order, Judge Koberlein went on to rule that Mills’ testimony had not been “truthful” when it came to explicit material recorded during the relationship with Langston.

The full list of scandals Mills is facing is even longer. As I reported, former colleagues who worked with Mills as private military contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq have said that Mills severely exaggerated his military record by falsely claiming to have been an Army Ranger, an Army sniper, and a Special Forces qualified medic—none of which are supported by his official Army records. A man who served under Mills in the Army told me Mills is a “pathological liar.” He also said, “I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.” (Mills’ congressional office did not respond to a request for comment.)

Army records released earlier this year show Mills was awarded his Bronze Star in June 2024—more than two decades after the events in Iraq used to justify the award. The form submitted to recommend Mills for the Bronze Star stated that Mills saved the lives of three men during two battles in Iraq in 2003. (Mills has not said who wrote the form or when it was submitted to the Army.)

Joe Heit, one of the men whose life Mills allegedly saved, told me that he has no memory of ever meeting the congressman. He also said that Mills could not have saved his life because he did not sustain life-threatening injuries during the battle in question. A second veteran in a similar position has sworn in a written statement that the claims about him on Mills’ Bronze Star recommendation form are “false and a [f]abrication.”

The Florida Republican’s business and financial dealings are also complicated. Pacem Defense, an international arms dealing business closely tied to a company Mills co-founded before entering Congress, is now so broke that it has failed to pay its own legal bills, according to court records. A status report filed in federal court on Monday shows that the company has also failed to provide any of the $8 million that it is legally obligated to pay another company in response to litigation. Despite now facing $1,000 of additional interest per day, the court filing states that “Pacem has not paid a penny” of what it owes.

According to another filing in the case, a different Pacem entity called Pacem Solutions International paid $12,000 per month in rent to Pacem Estate Holdings through at least December while in financial distress. It also kept up those rent payments during a period when many of Pacem’s workers were indefinitely furloughed. Mills’ congressional financial disclosure states that he owns 49 percent of Pacem Solutions and 100 percent of Pacem Estate Holdings. In other words, a company he co-founded and in which he retains a major stake paid $12,000 per month in rent to a second company he wholly owned during the same period when many Pacem employees were out of work. (Coincidentally or not, Mills has been living in what was listed online as a $12,000 per month oceanfront rental in Florida.)

Mills has tried to distance himself from Pacem’s conduct by saying his companies are now in a “blind trust.” Kedric Payne, vice president and general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told me earlier this year that the explanation is nonsensical because Mills’ own financial disclosure specifies the exact percentages he ownsof the companies that are supposedly in the blind trust. As Payne made clear, “If you can see what your holdings are, it is not a blind trust.”