LAKE CITY — Central Florida Congressman Cory Mills endured a heated cross-examination from his ex-girlfriend’s lawyer on Friday, facing questions on his romantic relationships, marital status and text messages.
Lindsey Langston, 26, a state GOP committeewoman and the reigning Miss United States beauty queen, is seeking a restraining order against the 45-year-old Republican lawmaker.
She is accusing him of threatening to release nude images of her and physically harm her future romantic interests. Mills vehemently denied those allegations in his testimony, saying the two were discussing reconciliation and he even assisted her family with a tax issue. They had split once before but got back together, he said.
The two sides finished their closing arguments Friday. Judge Fred Koberlein will issue a decision later and gave the attorneys until Thursday to submit proposed judgments.
Langston’s lawyer, Bobi Frank, grilled Mills over his separation from his wife, Rana Al Saadi, and relationship with another woman, Sarah Raviani, a co-founder of Iranians for Trump.
At the same time Mills said he was discussing reconciling with Langston, he was legally married and living with Raviani, according to his testimony.
“I don’t think that anybody can state that his credibility is where it needs to be,” Frank said in her closing argument. She added, “It made absolutely no sense that he is reconciling with Ms. Langston while he’s living with another girlfriend while he’s still married.”
But Mills’ lawyer, John Terhune, said Langston failed to prove that she was being harassed, and the two were having a conversation about the end of their relationship.
“Relationships don’t just extinguish, particularly when you’ve been together for three or four years,” he said. “They take some time. That’s exactly what was happening.”
Mills, first elected in 2022 as a strong supporter of President Donald Trump, represents Seminole County and parts of Volusia County. He’s been dogged by controversy since taking office. This one required him for the second time to appear in a small historic courthouse in Lake City, a small North Florida town where Langston lives.
Langston said she started a romantic relationship in November 2021 with Mills, and she moved into his home in New Smyrna Beach.
The relationship ended in February, she said, when she learned through news reports of a domestic disturbance involving Mills and Raviani.
Raviani subsequently said no assault occurred at Mills’ D.C. penthouse, and the investigation ended with no arrest.
Langston testified that in the followingmonths Mills repeatedly ignored her pleas to be left alone.
Langston filed a complaint in July with the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, where she lives. That complaint was forwarded to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for further investigation.
Friday’s hearing for the first time revealed that Mills is still legally married.
Though they had long been separated, Mills’ wife officially filed for divorce in July of this year, according to his testimony. He and his wife co-founded several security and defense contracting companies. Mills is an Army veteran with an estimated net worth of about $24 million.
“This is not a typical divorce,” Mills said. “There’s a lot of business intertwined there.”
Langston’s petition for a restraining order included several text messages from Mills. In one, he wrote, “May want to tell every guy you date that if we run into each other at any point. Strap up cowboy.”
Other messages referenced videos, which Langston testified were sexual in nature. In one message Mills wrote, “I can send him a few videos of you as well/ Oh, I still have them.”
Mills said he deleted any explicit videos he had of Langston, and his phone was damaged and he couldn’t even retrieve most of the images saved on the device. The videos he referred to were not sexual in nature, he testified. One referred to a social media post in which Langston talked about falling in love with another man, he said.
“This is something that obviously does more damage to me sending these videos than it would to Ms. Langston,” Mills said. “Not to mention the fact that no one would have ever even known that these videos existed if it hadn’t been for this petition here.”
When he wrote “strap up cowboy,” Mills said he was making a rodeo reference to get ready for a “wild ride.”
Beyond the courtroom, Mills has been weathering political storms on multiple fronts.
He generated a conservative backlash for joining with only three other Republicans who voted against a resolution censuring Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
Mills’ vote helped to kill the resolution seeking to punish Omar over her criticism of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Mills defended the vote on free speech grounds, but multiple influential Republicans branded him a “traitor.”
Before the vote, Democrats had brought a similar censure measure against Mills, citing his personal and political scandals. But they pulled back after Mills opposed Omar’s reprimand.
The House Ethics Committee is also scrutinizing Mills’ business dealings and financial disclosure statements, including whether Mills benefited from federal contracts while serving in Congress.