U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace has introduced several documents she says help prove fellow Republican Rep. Cory Mills made false claims about his four-year stint in the U.S. Army.
Mills is a two-term congressman endorsed by President Donald Trump who represents Seminole and part of Volusia County in Florida’s 7th District. He has been under fire from a number of fronts, including an ongoing House ethics investigation.
Mace — who has been quarrelling with Mills and pushed for his expulsion from Congress in recent weeks — offered the materials into the record during a House Armed Services Committee hearing involving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The documents, which The News-Journal has not yet seen, include a statement from Mills’ first sergeant, “which states his forms and accounts from his military service are falsified,” a photo of Mills wearing a Bronze Star in 2019, before he was officially given the medal, and a document detailing his “life-saving” exploits in Iraq in 2003.
“According to the soldiers who were there, they said it never happened,” Mace said.
Mace also offered a transcript of a conversation she had with retired Brig. Gen. Arnold N.G. Bray, whose signature is on the Form 638 that Mills had said explains the rationale for his receiving the Bronze Star.
Bray told Mace he did not review, read or sign the Form 638, she said.
“To be candid, I didn’t look at it,” Mace quoted Bray as saying.
She mentioned Mills’ past claims to have been “blown up” while working as a defense contractor in Iraq in 2006, and Mills’ 2011 marriage certificate showing he wed a Muslim women in a mosque, a photo showing him with “a Russian hooker in Afghanistan,” and the 2025 restraining order keeping him from contacting a former girlfriend.
“I just buried my father on Thursday, Mr. Chairman. My father died with shrapnel in his body,” Mace said, adding he had served tours of duty in Vietnam.
“I take stolen valor seriously because we have men and women who have given their lives, and an individual that steals the stories of dead soldiers or injured soldiers has no right to serve in this body, let alone on this committee,” Mace said.
The News-Journal has reached out to Mills’ office seeking comment. This story will be updated if he responds.
Democratic opponent calls stolen valor ‘deeply offensive’ to veterans
One of Mills’ Democratic opponents, Bale Dalton — a Navy reservist and veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars — reacted to Mace’s appearance with a statement to The News-Journal.
“The idea of embellishing your own service is deeply offensive to us veterans,” Dalton said. “I’ve been to war. Play-acting heroism, or claiming false credit is an insult to the service members who have put themselves in harm’s way, and to the families whose loved ones won’t come home.
“I thank Congressman Mills for the time he spent in uniform — but I share Rep. Mace’s concern that soldiers have come forward to question Congressman Mills’ stories,” Dalton said. “And my question always comes back to this: what is such a corrupt, scandal-ridden representative doing to make our lives better here in Central Florida?”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Nancy Mace offers ‘stolen valor’ documents involving Cory Mills
Reporting by Mark Harper, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
