Miss United States Files Restraining Order Against GOP Rep. Cory Mills

Lindsey Langston reported the Florida Republican to law enforcement for harassment last month.

Rep. Cory Mills, a Republican from Florida, on May 14, 2024. Photo by ALEX KENT/AFP via Getty Images.

Lindsey Langston, a Florida Republican state committeewoman and the reigning Miss United States, has filed a restraining order against Florida Republican Rep. Cory Mills, after reporting him to local and state law enforcement for harassment, threatening to release sexual videos, and to harm future boyfriends.

Langston told Drop Site News she and Mills began dating in November of 2021, and that she moved in with him at his rented Florida residence last summer. She broke up with him this February when she learned he had a second girlfriend from national news reports—the second girlfriend had reported Mills to police for allegedly assaulting her at their Washington, D.C. condo (though the woman, Sarah Raviani, later walked those allegations back).

Mills continued to harass Langston for months, she reported to police last month, despite repeated requests to be left alone. As part of a police report she made on July 14, 2025, she provided local and state investigators with timestamped digital evidence to support her allegations, which she also shared with Drop Site.

“The threats from Cory intensified over time,” she told Drop Site. “From emotional manipulation, to physical violence against whoever I date in the future, to threats of having me stripped of the Miss United States crown… something I worked extremely hard for and a dream that was placed in my heart long before I even knew who Cory Mills was.”

The evidence covers months of interactions and includes text messages in which Mills—who says he separated from his wife in 2022—warned Langston he posed a threat to anyone she wanted to date in the future (“Strap up, cowboy,” he said in one text) and threatened to release private images shared in the context of their relationship. Langston submitted the evidence to back up an incident report she filed with the Columbia County sheriff’s office last month.

“Since February 20th of 2025 Cory has contacted Lindsey numerous times on numerous different accounts threatening to release nude images and videos of her, to include recorded videos of her and Cory engaging in sexual acts,” the police report says.

Drop Site sent a detailed comment request to Mills, who said the accusations were untrue. Before he replied to Drop Site, Mills called Langston from Raviani’s number, then sent several text messages asking her to take back her allegations, saying, “Only you can stop this,” and “I understand you [sic] mom is going through a lot of mental health issues.”

Langston also received a call and texts from Mills’s general counsel, who told her it is illegal under Florida law for her to share her messages with Mills to a reporter without Mills’s consent.

Mills, now in his second congressional term, has styled himself a MAGA Republican and vocal ally of President Donald Trump, appearing alongside fellow diehards at a press conference outside Trump’s hush money trial last year. He has also expressed ambitions for statewide office, telling Politico in January that he planned to run for the Senate seat formerly held by Marco Rubio, now Trump’s Secretary of State. Last fall, Mills—an international arms dealer and former Army medic—told people close to him that he was in the running for Trump’s Secretary of Defense.

In May, Trump signed a new law, called the “Take It Down Act,” which makes it a federal crime to publish or threaten to publish intimate material “for the purpose of intimidation, coercion, extortion, or to create mental distress.” Mills voted in favor of the Take It Down Act on April 28. (Mills has not been charged with a violation of the Act.)

The same day Trump signed the Take It Down Act—May 19—Mills sent Langston the following messages:

“Let him put his actions behind his mouth,” Mills wrote, referencing a man he believed was Langston’s new boyfriend. “I can send him a few videos of you as well. Oh, I still have them.”

Langston told Drop Site that the report she made with the Columbia County sheriff’s office has since been “leveled up” to state investigators with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The incident report, obtained by Drop Site, described months of harassment from Mills, noting he had also been “threatening to harm any men Lindsey intended to date in the future.”

One text, obtained by Drop Site, reads, “You want to date or be with someone else. Be my guest. But they need to know well in advance that if we cross paths, l don't care this week, this month, or this decade. They better damn well know it’s coming every time.”

Another message, this one from a Mills Instagram account, reads, “P.S. still waiting on your boy’s text or does he only act tough in front of you? Florida is a small place and my cousin…just moved to Lake City.”

The investigation and restraining order add to an already tumultuous start to the MAGA Republican’s second congressional term. In February, a separate girlfriend reported Mills to police for bruising her at their Washington, D.C., condo, though she later recanted those allegations.

“My biggest fear is that this investigation will mirror the Washington D.C. investigation of the February altercation,” Langston said, referring to the fact that the U.S. attorney did not sign an arrest warrant for Mills issued before Raviani recanted. “I do not question local and state law enforcement’s (Florida) ability to handle this investigation, but I am concerned that because he is an elected official and public figure this will be put off-putting me at risk. I worry that I am simply poking the bear.”

Then, weeks after that incident, the Office of Congressional Conduct referred Mills to the House Ethics Committee for investigation after finding he likely violated federal ethics, contracting, and campaign finance laws. In July, Mills and the weapons company he founded a decade ago, PACEM, were notified that their foreign creditors were moving to liquidate tens of millions of dollars in unpaid foreign debt that Mills has never disclosed to Congress, despite his personal liability. Days later, Mills’s D.C. landlord filed a lawsuit to evict him after he failed to pay four straight months of $20,000 rent.

Mills denies assaulting Raviani and any financial wrongdoing; he made good on his back rent after the lawsuit was publicly reported.

Langston was elected Columbia County Republican Committeewoman last August and took the crown at the Miss United States pageant in October. She told police that she confronted Mills in February about Raviani, with whom he had just returned from a Middle East vacation. Mills denied being in another relationship and claimed the assault allegation was “fabricated” by the media.

“On February 20, 2025 Lindsey was at their New Smyrna residence when she saw on the news that Cory had been in a physical altercation with ‘his girlfriend’ while in Washington D.C.,” the report says. “Lindsey confronted Cory about the woman, to which Cory told her he was not in a romantic relationship with her and the press fabricated the story. Lindsey then found a social media account for the other woman and saw posted photos of her with Cory.” (This all came after a cocktail party in January, Langston said, when Mills had introduced her to a group of Florida GOP movers and shakers as his “girlfriend of one year”—reinforcing her belief they were exclusive.)

Langston left the house and broke off the relationship, she told Drop Site. Days later, Mills tried to convince her to stay together, text messages show. When Langston pointed out that Raviani was with him in his Florida home that very moment, Mills said he’d only brought Raviani to the beach house as “a PR thing” that “lawyers recommended.”

Over the next several months, Mills ignored Langston’s requests to be left alone— alternately declaring his ongoing love for her, insulting her, trying to rekindle their relationship, and threatening to attack future boyfriends.

The unwanted contact continued even after Langston blocked his phone number and social media accounts. At one point, she said, she received a call from a generic U.S. Capitol number. Mills also got around the blocks by sending private Instagram messages to the official Miss United States account, Langston said, knowing that pageant employees also had access to that account.

Today, Langston understands her relationship with Mills survived several competing D.C. trysts, knowledge of which is now fairly common among GOP members, staffers, and operatives. Langston told Drop Site that she felt she was speaking out, as Miss United States, “to be a voice for those needing to be heard-for past, present, and future victims who are being manipulated, threatened, and extorted into silence.”

Three other former romantic partners of Mills shared similar anecdotes and observations, telling Drop Site they believe Mills is frightening, disloyal, and unstable. Mills has threatened multiple women to deter them from speaking about him publicly, according to five people with knowledge of the threats.

Langston told Drop Site that Mills kept pressuring her to have group sex even after she made it clear to him she did not want to participate. Langston shared one text message proposition from Mills, which began, “I know you’re not into this, but….”

The three other women described Mills as a liar, saying he confidently misled them about fundamental facts of his life. Two of these women said that, after describing some of Mills’ behavior, trusted friends urged them to get as much distance from him as possible, as soon as possible.

“He’s a legit psychopath,” one ex told Drop Site, adding that the ease with which Mills lies, manipulates, and veils his threats still frightens her.

Another former romantic partner also independently described Mills as a “psychopath.”

On at least one occasion, Mills sent a woman to a male friend’s home—a male friend this woman had never met—to have sex, according to texts and audio messages obtained by Drop Site. The male friend described his experience as humiliating, likening his role in them to “sex slavery.”

Langston also raised questions about how Mills receives his income. “There were many times where I personally saw people from his company give him sacks of cash.” One such incident took place last June, Langston recalled, when she and Mills had dinner in D.C. with two officials from his weapons company, PACEM. Langston said the conversation at the table never veered into business, but, after dinner, one of the men handed Mills a bank pouch full of cash.

Another ex-girlfriend independently told Drop Site that Mills would “show off” these bank pouches, which he would sometimes claim carried as much as $100,000.

An attorney for PACEM did not immediately respond to a comment request from Drop Site. The day after this article published, PACEM chief legal officer Joseph E. Schmitz sent a letter saying the PACEM companies "categorically deny the implication" that "a Pacem company, or any representative thereof, was involved in illegal payments of cash to Congressman Mills." Schmitz also said that Mills has "formally stepped back from any role in the management of the Pacem group of companies, and formally placed his ownership interest in a blind trust."

Mills's most recent financial disclosure, which covers his first year in office, states that Mills has unspecified ownership of PACEM Defense, which he declared as 100 percent on prior disclosures. The most recent disclosure also specifies a 49 percent ownership of PACEM Solution International, and congressional investigators cited PACEM Defense as his "wholly owned" company in their ethics referral this year. As recently as May 2024, Mills identified himself as CEO of PACEM Defence Holdings Inc. in Delaware corporate filings. None of Mills's financial disclosures list any trust, and he has affirmatively declared on all his disclosures that he has not withheld any specified trust information.

Mills lavished his girlfriends with gifts; he gave Langston—including designer clothes and accessories, trips, and a pre-owned Range Rover—and heavily subsidized her living expenses, she said.

Mills is also listed as personally liable in Virginia corporate records for tens of millions of dollars in corporate debt, doesn’t draw a corporate salary, and claims to donate his full congressional salary to charity. Last month, he received an eviction notice from the Washington, D.C. condo he shared with Raviani after failing to pay his $20,000 rent for four months. Mills blamed a broken link in his payment app, and squared up with his landlord after national media picked up the story.

Update: August 7, 2025: This story has been updated with a response from PACEM's lawyer and additional information on Mills's relationship with PACEM.

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