The still untold story about GOP Rep. Cory Mills is a massive sleeper scandal for an outlet with resources to take an eye off the Trump ball: Money, sex, international arms deals, stolen valor claims, wildly shady finances. Here’s the gist, most of it from public record. (1/X)
In 2021, Mills ran for Congress in Florida as a MAGAfied war hero & won, despite owning & living in a McLean VA mansion. But when he ran, his arms company was in money trouble. And Mills made some financial moves that happened to coincide with his campaign.
It’s probably easiest to center this story on Mills’ company. PACEM Defense (and related entities) is an int’l arms dealer. (For a sense of where we’re headed, PACEM has an unpaid federal tax lien of $600,000 from 2022, per Va. UCC filings. They paid a separate one last year.)
For another sense, Mills’ network of companies have landed federal contracts while he’s been in Congress. Includes hundreds of thousands to subsidiary Amtec Less Lethal Systems (ALS, Inc), some of which—with DOJ—are CURRENTLY in progress. Check em out on usaspending.gov
But when Mills launched his campaign in 2021, he was restructuring PACEM debt. Canadian lender Waygar Capital—which had already loaned to PACEM—bought up more debt weeks after Mills filed to run. The next month, Mills—who put his house up for Waygar—put $200K into his campaign
But Mills has never reported any liabilities to his Canadian lender, as ethics rules require. He’s also failed to report he’s director of a Canadian entity called PACEM North Canada Inc—created the month they got their first Waygar loan, in 2019: ised-isde.canada.ca/cc/lgcy/fdrlCr…
Back to PACEM. Created in 2015 in VA, PACEM Defense went dormant. Mills reinstated it three years later, in 2018. Here’s some good background on the company and Mills’ international arms dealing history from @insider in 2023: businessinsider.com/rep-cory-mills…
In 2018 Mills opened a HQ branch in Perry, FL. PACEM also got Small Business Admin loan, via Va. bank Atlantic Union. Source w/direct knowledge said PACEM wasn’t a typical AU client, adding Mills’ $4M VA home was top collateral & a lucrative contract was coming—but it never came
In Oct 2018, PACEM—which Mills' wife also ran—bought Wisconsin arms maker Amtec Less Lethal Systems (ALS). Mills was removed from filings in 2023, but never listed his 2021 & 2022 chairman position on disclosures, as ethics rules require. (ALS gets DOJ $) prnewswire.com/news-releases/…
Then in April 2019, PACEM got its first loan from the Canadian lender, Waygar Capital. This seems to be when the trouble really starts. Here is a great backgrounder on Waygar, including about Mills and PACEM opmwire.com/ninepoint-wayg…
In 2019, Waygar loaned PACEM $13M (Canadian) w/potential $10M increase. Mills is personally liable, per UCC filings in Va & Fl. Waygar also got patents from ALS that same month, which apparently lapsed for nonpayment in 2023—while Mills was in Congress—but were reinstated.
-Waygar’s site——is suddenly down. Don’t know why. Here’s what it said days ago
-Waygar/PACEM share a board member: Rick Hillier, ex head of CN Armed Forces
-PACEM site doesn’t disclose Hillier dual roles
-The Waygar fund wasn’t looking so hot this year waygarcapital.com
Things went awry. An ongoing suit shows PACEM quit paying principal on SBA loan & defaulted. COVID hit, SBA offered loan subsidies. PACEM restructured so the govt would pay down the principal PACEM hadn’t. SBA caught the default & halted subsidies. (Judge from hearing & ruling👇)
For some reason PACEM waited 3.5 years to file this lawsuit against the SBA (Dec 2023) to demand the monthly subsidy payments it said SBA owed. When the court dismissed, PACEM appealed. That’s ongoing—a sitting congressman still suing the SBA—with a hearing set for next month
The suit is odd for a few reasons. The amount is only $180K, and the Waygar loan is 10s of millions. Waygar bought the debt partly bc of the SBA subsidies, PACEM claimed (see below), but that debt purchase came a full year after SBA had already cut PACEM off......
The timing is also odd: December 2023, the same month PACEM entered into a contract to ship millions of worth of grenades to Ukraine via Czech company DSS. DSS is suing PACEM for failure to deliver the grenades; PACEM sued back. Also ongoing. More here:
AMTEC also got a COVID loan—and a much larger one, more than a million dollars.
In February, PACEM sued Customs & Border Patrol for information related to that lawsuit, specifically about grenades bound for Ukraine that CBP seized in 2023. That’s right: Mills’ company raked in millions from Ukraine military aid! More here:
I promised sex. Mills & wife are allegedly divorcing. In Feb, he reportedly assaulted his longtime girlfriend at their shared DC condo building. I learned there’s more to be reported about what Mills had been up to with her. Let’s just say it sounds Gaetzy apnews.com/article/cory-m…
I also promised stolen valor. I’ve learned House Democrats were very recently alerted about stolen valor & false records claims filed against Mills—an Iraq veteran—with Army Human Resources Command, the FBI, the DOJ, and a US Atty’s office.
There’s obviously a whole lot more to churn through, but I’ll stop here for now. Happy hunting, reporters. (And I really do wonder why the Waygar Capital website is suddenly down.)
TO BE CLEAR: She was not underage! But it is absolutely very very Gaetzy.
Forgot the cherry on top: Cory Mills—who is up to his eyeballs in foreign debt, foreign lawsuits, foreign arms deals, and even has an unreported foreign company—sits on both the Armed Services Committee AND Foreign Affairs Committee (where he chairs intel and oversight)
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I think I found the Syrian plane that secretly helped Assad regime leaders escape to Benghazi. I found it because two congressmen—one of them an active global arms dealer & Foreign Affairs Committee member—posed with it on Instagram. The plane is currently under US sanctions.
Why’d a weapons maker—rife with conflicts of interest in the region & completely soaked in undisclosed foreign debt—go to Syria with a newly madeover nonprofit advocating for lifting sanctions on a gov we haven’t recognized that’s run by former Al Qaeda & is on our terror list?
And why is this same congressional arms dealer doing this while his weapons company’s chief legal counsel—who has close ties with notorious US mercenary Erik Prince—lobbies on behalf of Libyan allies of Assad? Let’s find out!
NEW: In 2014, Mohamed Al-Hanooti—Hamas fundraiser & unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 WTC bombing—was back at Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, as the DC-area mufti, or top Islamic cleric.
That year, he presided over Rep Cory Mills’ marriage in a religious ceremony. 1/X
Here’s the marriage certificate. Fairfax County confirmed to me the info on this document matches their official records. For officiant address, Hanooti, who died in 2015, listed Dar al-Hijrah mosque, where he also previously served as imam. Anwar Al-Awlaki was also a DAH imam.
If you want to know what Republicans like to say about this particular mosque, Hanooti, and people who associate with them, google away. Or you can just ask GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, pictured here with Mills and GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson last June.
NEW: Rep Cory Mills said on his Bronze Star papers he saved this man's life. Troops in the battle told me it's a lie. Yet here he is months after his star—after taking $2000 from the man's dad. If the claims I have are true, Mills lied about his war heroics. Did he have help? 1/X
The Daytona News-Journal investigated Mills' Bronze Star last year. It led to this headline, seemingly confirming it was settled & Mills' claims checked out. But his claims *don't* check out. He got re-elected & currently sits on Armed Services. news-journalonline.com/story/news/loc…
The officer who awarded medals for the events—Col. Shannon E. Nielsen—told me Mills wasn't involved, barely recalled him. Statements from troops who lived the events—in a complaint filed with the Ofc of Cong Ethics—say Mills wasn't there. Here's one from a man Mills said he saved
Rep. Cory Mills went to Syria with another Congressman. But only Mills met with Syria's foreign minister & president about lifting sanctions. Mills runs an arms company, whose current & longtime general counsel, Joe Schmitz, has been working for the pro-Assad Libyan Parliament
Schmitz is working as a subcontractor for the Vogel group, which landed the Libya contract in Oct. 2023, per DOJ foreign agent filings. It seems a great deal of the payments have been going to Schmitz.
Schmitz's work for Libyan Parliament includes legislator outreach. Last Feb, they requested a meeting with Cory Mills' own congressional general counsel. Libya has a divided government, and the head of Parliament claimed command of the Libyan army as recently as November.
In response to Cory Mills blocking me, let’s talk about his nonprofit.
If you didn’t know Mills had a nonprofit, I don’t blame you—the House Ethics Committee didn’t, either. While he’s never disclosed it as required, that sure did not stop him & his office from promoting it!
On 9/8/2021, Mills created the group—Never Forgotten, Inc—in VA, home to his weapons company (the group’s reg agent) and until 2023, to Mills himself. But Never Forgotten doesn’t appear in the VA charity registry, nor Florida’s (pictured), where they opened a branch last December
Off the bat: Nonprofits must register with states to fundraise there. Never Forgotten seemingly isn’t allowed to raise $ in its homes. But now NF claims it never raised money—all revenue from govt or people paying for its services. And those services are: Foreign rescue missions!
The chair & chief legal officer of Rep. Cory Mills' arms company—Joseph Schmitz—is a Pentagon IG who left amid a contract scandal in 2005 to become COO & general counsel of Erik Prince's Blackwater mercenary group. He was in that role during the Iraq massacre. But there's more...
In 2020 Prince tapped Schmitz as potential foreign agent to lobby for his $10B plan to put a private army in Ukraine. Schmitz was with Mills' company—PACEM—at the time. PACEM sold arms to Ukraine while Mills was in Congress, including a state-owned company
Schmitz was a 2016 Trump campaign adviser, which resurfaced his Pentagon scandal—including alleged antisemitic boasts about firing Jews & Holocaust denial, like "Ovens were too small to kill 6 million Jews." (Schmitz denies.) Mills hired him 2 years later. timesofisrael.com/trump-adviser-…