By Representative Cory Mills, a Republican from Florida and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Intelligence Subcommittee, is facing a growing storm of scandal as new revelations compound questions about his past associations and present conduct. Earlier in the week, journalist Jill Savage claimed to have uncovered a 2014 marriage certificate showing Mills’ wedding was officiated by Mohammed Al Hanooti, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The document, recorded in Fairfax County, Virginia, ties Mills’ personal life to a figure once central to federal terrorism investigations.
I met Cory Mills & thought he was great. Then I found his marriage certificate in March.
Mohammed Al Hanooti was the officiant at his wedding, he’s an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. pic.twitter.com/JhadLoE7P3
— Jill Savage (@Jill_Savage) September 19, 2025
Al Hanooti, then mufti at Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, was linked to radical networks later associated with al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki. The disclosure has raised sharp questions about how Mills—now directly shaping U.S. policy in Syria—came into contact with such circles. Mills has denied ever converting to Islam, insisting he has “always been a Christian,” though multiple sources cited by The Blaze suggest otherwise.
At the same time, Mills’ business dealings remain under scrutiny. Pacem Defense, the arms firm he co-founded with his wife, secured a $228 million contract with Iraq in its first year of operation, a deal later audited after the defense minister involved was toppled in a no-confidence vote. Mills’ April meeting with Syrian President Al-Sharaa, himself a former al-Qaeda figure, only intensified concerns that his personal, financial, and political ties blur the line between private interest and public duty.
The controversy coincides with Mills’ September 17 vote to shield Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, from censure over comments on the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Mills defended his narrow, deciding vote as a stand for free speech, while simultaneously calling for an investigation into Omar’s alleged immigration fraud. Fellow Republicans have accused him of hypocrisy and even quid pro quo, with some demanding his resignation.
Nancy Mace, for example, said “It’s really gross, very disappointing,” and that she had sent Mills name to Trump as one of the Republicans willing to stand with The Squad.
Mills isn’t just facing problems in Washington; back home, he has been accused of extorting a former beauty queen. Former Miss United States and Columbia County GOP committeewoman Lindsey Langston has accused Mills of threatening to release sex tapes after their breakup earlier this year. Langston, who filed a police complaint on July 14, told Blaze Media that Mills “put it in writing” that he retained explicit videos of their encounters and threatened to distribute them to her future partners. According to text messages she shared, Mills warned: “I can send him a few videos of you as well. Oh, I still have them.”
Langston described a relationship that began in 2021 but soured amid what she called instability, late-night deliveries of “money bags,” and an eviction notice against Mills for more than $85,000 in unpaid rent on his Washington penthouse. She left in February after another woman, Sarah Raviani, reported domestic violence at Mills’ apartment. Though Raviani later recanted, Langston said the threats began soon after she moved out.
Her attorney, former state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, called the case “sexual extortion and sexual blackmail to an extreme degree,” urging law enforcement to act. The investigation, now involving both the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, could test Florida’s extortion statutes and a new federal law—the Take It Down Act, signed by President Trump in May to target non-consensual distribution of explicit images.
Langston has also filed for a restraining order, saying Mills tried to sabotage her political career by claiming her name was being circulated negatively in “Mar-a-Lago and within some DeSantis circle.” “I feared what silence might allow,” she said.
Together, the allegations paint the picture of a congressman whose private life and public responsibilities are colliding in increasingly corrupt ways. From a wedding officiated by a radical cleric, to an audited arms deal in Iraq, to accusations of sexual blackmail by a former beauty queen, Cory Mills now confronts overlapping crises that strike at both his political standing and his personal credibility.
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