Cory Mills leans on comrade's testimony, only to have his 'twice wounded' tall tale blown up



Republican Rep. Cory Mills (Fla.) has on multiple occasions claimed that he was "blown up" twice overseas and campaigned on the biographical assertion that he was "wounded twice while deployed." His story does not, however, add up.

When called out this week for alleged "stolen valor," the scandal-plagued congressman shared a letter from an old comrade in an apparent effort to validate his narrative. This attempt to bolster his account does not appear to have gone as planned.

The narrative

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, then-congressional candidate Cory Mills released a campaign advertisement highlighting his supposed bona fides. A quarter of the way through the ad, Mills refers to his formative experiences in the Middle East.

'Unreal.'

Mills states in the ad, "I was hit not once but twice with improvised explosive devices and explosive formed projectiles. After you take a hit like that, you don't know if you're going to survive or not."

During that stretch of the video, a large graphic appears at the center of the screen stating, "WOUNDED TWICE WHILE DEPLOYED."

Screenshot: YouTube, Cory Mills

Keen observers have questioned the veracity of the "wounded twice" claim in the campaign advertisement as well as Mills' repeated assertion that he was "blown up twice" while serving as a defense contractor in Iraq.

Mills' congressional bio states, "While serving abroad, he was struck twice in 2006, once with an improvised explosive device (IED) and once with an Iranian explosively formed projectile (EFP), which resulted in numerous casualties."

RELATED: Cory Mills' Bronze Star document raises serious concerns about stolen valor, Rep. Mace says

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

Mills told C-SPAN in 2023 that he "was blown up twice by roadside bombs in 2006."

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.) shared a video of Mills' claims to X on Monday, writing, "Beginning to think nothing Cory Mills says is true. This guy has been parading himself around as some sort of U.S. Army special ops covert Ranger sniper James Bond 007 elite commando for years and it's not even remotely close."

'Was it some severe maiming wound? No.'

"He was an ambulance driver mainly in the motor pool," continued Mace. "Medics work hard to save lives! Why wasn’t that good enough? But instead he fabricated his resume, and stole stories from men who either gave their life for their country and can’t speak now or can’t speak for themselves due to their injuries."

"Total Stolen Valor. And this guy sits on the House Armed Service committee?" added Mace. "Unreal."

The admission

Mills' "blown up twice" claims appear to be in reference to two incidents that took place in Iraq: a roadside bombing that occurred on March 15, 2006, and a roadside bombing that took place on April 19, 2006.

Blaze News previously confirmed that Mills was present at the first incident. However, photographic evidence and sources have called into question the congressman's recollection of events and alleged injuries.

Mills, discussing the first incident, revealed the extent of his injuries in his April interview with Blaze News.

"I ended up hitting my head," said Mills. "Was it some severe maiming wound? No. I've got the actual document that shows where I was hit."

RELATED: Stolen valor? Veterans dispute Cory Mills’ record: 'He fooled a lot of us'

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

"I had a concussion. So a concussion isn't being wounded? Knocking your head off an actual armored vehicle door and having to go get treated and have three days down, that's not being wounded, right? So what is your definition? Do I need to lose an arm? Do I need to be shot in shrapnel? Just tell me. Tell me what your definition of wounded is. Because apparently, [traumatic brain injury] is not an external wound," said Mills.

After Mills suggested that he had sustained a Purple Heart-qualifying wound, Blaze News asked Mills for clarification whether he had indeed suffered a traumatic brain injury.

"No, actually I just got reviewed by the PA and the doc there, and they basically told me, 'Monitor yourself over the next 24 hours,' and then — which I did — and then 72 hours later, I was cleared to be able to return back to work."

"So you weren't wounded, then," said Blaze News.

"According to them, I had a severe concussion. That's all they wrote up," said Mills.

'That blood on Cory was not Cory's.'

When Blaze News later pressed Mills on the twice-wounded claim and asked whether, in the second incident in which a vehicle was hit by an explosion, he was in the affected car, Mills answered, "No."

"We were on the team that [was] actually there," said Mills. "We helped to try and pull everyone out and actually get the bodies transferred."

"Were you wounded then?" asked Blaze News.

"No, I wasn't wounded on that," said Mills.

Scott Kempkins, one of Mills' then-colleagues who suffered injuries in the second incident, previously told Blaze News that Mills was "absolutely not wounded."

"I got hit in the shoulder, the neck, and the leg," Kempkins said. "And then the guy in the turret took a little bit of shrapnel to the side of his face. That was it. Cory's vehicle was already around the corner and about 50 yards down the street. It would have been impossible for him to be wounded."

While Mills has referred to blood on his pant leg in a photograph taken after the mission as supposed confirmation of an injury, one of his colleagues told Blaze News that the blood did not belong to Mills.

An appeal to doubt

In response to Rep. Mace's Monday tweet, Mills shared the photograph of him apparently wearing another man's blood along with a July 16, 2025, letter from Paul Sovitsky, Mills' team leader in Iraq when he was working for DynCorp International on the State Department's World Personal Protective Services program.

'If Cory is claiming he was wounded in both, that's probably a stretch.'

Sovitsky's letter did not support the "twice wounded" claim but gave Mills a possible out regarding his "blown up twice" narrative.

"I understand that there may be a question as to what 'blown up' means to the military contractors that served in Iraq and Afghanistan," said the letter. "It refers (in contractor speak) to being in a motorcade struck by improvised explosive devices."

"It does not necessarily mean that you are physically 'blown up' or even seriously wounded," added Sovitsky.

RELATED: 5 former colleagues of Rep. Cory Mills say he told them he became a Muslim — as girlfriend claims Blaze News report 'entirely untrue'

Courtesy of Scott Kempkins. An image apparently taken after the April 2006 roadside bombing.

Sovitsky, who was in the vehicle with the congressman when their motorcade was ambushed by a command-detonated IED, subsequently told Blaze News that "with all of Cory's train wrecks, no one needs to lie about what he did."

"I don't think there was any question about the first explosion," said Sovitsky, who indicated he had asked for the letter not to be made public, and called Mills a "human train wreck."

Sovitsky lent credence to Mills' claim of an injury in the first roadside attack, telling Blaze News that the congressman complained of a "throbbing" head after their Suburban was raked with bullets and swept by a shock wave.

Sovitsky cast doubt, however, on whether Mills sustained an injury in the second roadside bombing, referring to indications that he was around 50 yards away at the time.

"If Cory is claiming he was wounded in both, that's probably a stretch," Sovitsky told Blaze News. "He did provide aid. He even got blood on his pants treating — I believe it was Scott Kempkins, who got a big wound in his shoulder."

When Blaze News noted that Mills had shared the photograph where his pant leg was bloodied as if to insinuate that was his injury, Sovitsky said, "No, no, totally a lie."

"That blood on Cory was not Cory's," added Sovitsky.

Blaze News has reached out to Mills for comment.

While Sovitsky acknowledged that the congressman proved effective and helpful at the time, he noted, "If the beef on Cory is that he has lied about his military service and exaggerated his contractor service, you can't fix that by then telling a lie."

"In court, the minute you can impeach some part of, you know, a witness' testimony, their entire testimony ... has to be questioned," said Sovitsky. "And I want Cory to pay the price for his lies and screwing people over."

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TRANSGENDER TERRORISM: A growing trend that the FBI must address NOW



The Oversight Project is unleashing a new campaign to urge the FBI to declare transgender ideology, motivated violence, and extremism as domestic terrorism — and Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, believes the move couldn’t be more necessary.

“It’s a terrible and growing sustained trend in American life right now. The transgender ideology-inspired violence and extremism is now domestic terrorism,” Howell tells BlazeTV host Jill Savage on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

To best explain the phenomena, Howell believes one must “go back 10 years.”

“When then-candidate Trump was running for president, one of his chief criticisms of then-President Obama was that Obama refused to say the words ‘radical Islamic extremism.’ So Trump took him to task over and over again,” Howell explains.


According to Howell, Trump was essentially making the case “that if you can’t define the enemy, you cannot defeat the enemy.”

“President Trump was right then, but now there’s another enemy on the scene. And it’s beyond obvious that transgender ideology is inspiring a very specific type of domestic terrorism,” he says.

This has been made abundantly clear via recent school shootings and, even more recently, through the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

“My colleague Roger Severino has an estimate out there: 50% of school mass shootings over the last 10 years have come from transgender ideologically motivated individuals. These are people who believe that if you do not affirm their gender identity or whatever their delusions are, that you are harming them physically, that it is a violent event,” he explains.

“Therefore, in their minds, their illogical and mentally ill minds, they can justify their own violence against others,” he says, adding, “That is a specific form of domestic terrorism that we’re seeing emerge, and it is time for the government to diagnose this.”

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🚨REVEALED: How Biden's FBI was Targeting Charlie Kirk's TPUSA!
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🚨REVEALED: How Biden's FBI was Targeting Charlie Kirk's TPUSA!

Soros and the 'Facebook wives’: Who’s controlling America’s DAs?



George Soros' shadow network has its hands everywhere, and the hosts of “Blaze News: The Mandate” believe that much of the horror we’ve seen unfold in the recent past can be linked to his network — as well as other billionaires.

And Vice President JD Vance is in clear agreement, after he called out Soros in a recent speech.

“Did you know that the George Soros Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the groups who funded that disgusting article justifying Charlie’s death, do you know they benefit from generous tax treatment? They are literally subsidized by you and me, the American taxpayer,” Vance said.

“And how do they reward us? By setting fire to the house built by the American family over 250 years,” he added.


And they don’t just fund cruelly written articles pushed in the mainstream media — but also district attorneys.

“Call me crazy,” BlazeTV host Jill Savage says, “But there was probably a time in our history that people thought ... their district attorney would actually be running their own office, but right now, America’s criminal justice system is actually being run by a lot of outside activists and donors.”

“It’s not democracy," BlazeTV host and Blaze News editor in chief Matthew Peterson chimes in, noting that it's also not just George Soros.

"You have billionaires — more than just George Soros — funding organizations that actively influence how we prosecute and how we sentence criminals. And in fact, it’s worse than that, because they foment criminality through these groups,” Peterson says.

“Look at the Facebook wives club,” Savage says. “Of course, we know that the leftists have their billionaires that are out there. It’s not just George Soros. But there’s the Social Environmental Entrepreneurs. It’s called SEE. It’s a California nonprofit group.”

“These Facebook wives, right — Priscilla Chan, obviously Mark Zuckerberg's wife, and Cari Tuna, the wife of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, and then you also have John Arnold, formerly of Enron,” she continues.

“These are the people that are going out there and saying, ‘No, no, no, your way of life — we don’t care,’” she says, before asking, “So why does this matter, that they have all these billionaires?”

Savage points to the latest headlines, particularly the ones about Iryna Zarutska, who was murdered on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“The person who brutally murdered her was let out 14 different times,” she says. “It’s your DAs that are allowing that to happen over and over and over again.”

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‘Trump next please’: Democrats on Bluesky call for MORE political violence



If you used the Bluesky app in the past couple of days, it would be hard not to notice just how bloodthirsty the Democratic Party has become — especially in the wake of the assassination of the right’s beloved Charlie Kirk.

One trend on the social media app has taken BlazeTV hosts Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson by surprise.

“There are a ton of crazies over there,” Savage says on “Blaze News: The Mandate.” “I am not on there, but they are basically saying, ‘Who’s next for all of this?’”

Leftists have been posting who they hope falls victim to the same fate as Charlie Kirk.


The most repeated names on this list include President Trump, J.K. Rowling, Joe Rogan, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Libs of TikTok, and Elon Musk.

“Charlie Kirk is dead (and has been for a few hours), Trump next please,” one user wrote on the left’s version of X.

“Unfortunately, this is what we will have to continue to deal with,” Savage says.

Blaze Media D.C. correspondent Christopher Bedford is also completely disturbed.

“The threats are real. The copycats are going to happen,” Bedford says.

“This really is a point where we can decide that we’re going to get better, or we can decide that we’re going to get much worse, much more quickly. And it’s going to take a serious turn by society, a serious rejection by the American left, by the universities — not just these businesses and these sports teams, but by the university system — of this kind of crap in order for this to actually have any kind of impact,” he explains.

“There needs to be significantly more accountability than there is right now. And funds need to be taken,” he continues. “And all these nonprofits that for the last five years have spent time funneling money towards bail funds for rioters, towards printing T-shirts that have guns on them with the trans flag that says ‘defend it’ ... these people who fund groups that are professional agitators — well, those funds need to be ceased, and those boards of directors need to be investigated. These are crimes.”

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Our inspiring statesman: The Charlie Kirk legacy



Charlie Kirk was only 31 years old when he was taken from this Earth, but his time here has undoubtedly left a lasting imprint on not just the nation’s youth — whom he was dedicated to reaching — but all Americans.

Blaze News editor in chief and BlazeTV host Matthew Peterson, BlazeTV host Jill Savage, and Blaze Media Washington correspondent Christopher Bedford are devastated by the tragic loss.

“Charlie Kirk built an organization and helped build a movement that ultimately propelled him to the very heights of American politics,” Peterson says on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

“And what we saw today was unspeakable evil, really, a political assassination of someone who was a political leader. This was someone who is a bright light, who I first met at the Claremont Institute’s Lincoln Fellowships,” he continues.

But Charlie wasn’t your average leader.



“Famously, Charlie didn’t go to college. Incredibly smart guy. He sought out wisdom. He sought out knowledge. He was a very sharp student, and he constantly adjusted and changed when he learned new things or saw new things as he was building and helping to make America great,” Peterson says.

“He was an incredible, incredible human being who never stopped doing, who never stopped learning, and who never stopped building,” he says, adding, “And ultimately I think that what he wanted to be was a statesman. ... This is what he wanted to become: an American statesman who changed things for the good. And that is what he did.”

Bedford agrees, though he notes that there was “a strange side” of Charlie that he “didn’t expect.”

“Sweetness. Humility, which really surprised me. Soft-spoken, kind. He had taken personal interests in people. You knew him through Claremont. I knew him through some hunting and fishing trips that our late friend Foster Friess put together and then later on through podcasts and events,” he explains.

While Bedford recalls that the events were “big, glitzy, glamorous, shiny, light-filled things with all kinds of celebrities,” he says Charlie “was not like that.”

“Not in person. Someone who’s married, someone with two children,” he says.

And Bedford has noticed that Charlie’s passing has stirred something in Americans, regardless of how political they are.

“One woman I know, who’s not — she just follows politics tangentially, one of my friends’ wives, she texted me and said, ‘I’m feeling really delicate right now. Not delicate like a flower, delicate like a bomb,’” he says.

“They’ve just killed a cultural figure,” he continues. “Not a politician, not a businessman, but a cultural figure who touched a lot of lives and was in a lot of living rooms with people and was on their personal devices and was on their Instagram feeds and TikToks and came into their classrooms and talked to them on campus and touched a lot of people.”

Peterson couldn’t agree more with Bedford’s friend’s wife, commenting, “Delicate like a bomb is right.”

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Two leaders stand in the stark light of blame after horrific Minneapolis Catholic school shooting



On Wednesday, August 27, Robin (formerly Robert) Westman, a 23-year-old transgender-identifying person, opened fire through the windows of Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis during a school Mass, killing two children and injuring 17 others. Westman, a former student, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, left behind writings and videos expressing hate toward multiple groups and an obsession with mass shooters.

“Minneapolis didn't just let a massacre happen. It helped make it happen,” says Jill Savage, BlazeTV host of “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

And two people stand under a harsh glare of blame: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D).

Minneapolis’ reputation was already waning thanks to the George Floyd riots and its defund-the-police crusade when Tim Walz made the state a transgender sanctuary in 2023.

But even though this move has proved disastrous, Mayor Frey has doubled down in his support for Minneapolis’ transgender community. “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity,” he said at a press conference on August 27. The next day, he reiterated the sentiment in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“Should we be talking about the trans community and making sure that they feel our love and support, or should we actually be looking at the Catholics right now — the ones that were actually killed yesterday in that church?” says Jill.

“This is the 42nd or maybe 43rd attack on an American Catholic church this year alone in the United States. It is over 520 attacks on Catholic churches here since 2020,” says Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford.

“They’ve been satanic; they’ve been anti-Catholic; they’ve been pro-abortion; they’ve been pro-trans.”

But they haven’t been that surprising.

“Minneapolis and Minnesota have had an extreme tolerance for evil and promoting evil,” says Bedford, condemning the state's “permissive abortion laws” and policies allowing the state to take children away from parents who oppose "gender-affirming care."

Bedford stresses the need to investigate how things like cross-sex hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and mutilating surgeries impact a transgender-identifying individual’s behavior. Perhaps Westman was just a case of mental illness; perhaps there were drugs related to his gender transition that influenced his deadly actions. “I think that's something that's absolutely worth investigating,” he says.

As for Walz, Bedford says he “deserves condemnation for his anti-Catholic sentiments.” The woke governor denied Catholic schools' requests for security funding in 2022 and 2023, despite an $18 billion state surplus, leaving nonpublic schools without access to safety grants provided to public schools. He also allegedly denied Catholic school students access to Minnesota’s Postsecondary Enrollment Options program, preventing them from earning tuition-free college credits, despite their academic eligibility.

“These are the sorts of things that are going on in the United States and are being allowed by our politicians. … It's soft on evil, and it allows it to fester,” he says.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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CONFIRMED: Biden's DOJ was in PANIC over legality of 'autopen pardons'



Brand-new evidence indicates that Biden’s DOJ knew that the autopen pardons were legally flawed, and internal emails show that even his own lawyers raised alarms.

“So I’m a little biased here, of course, but this is a big one. It is the first written, black-and-white evidence of disagreement in the senior-most levels of the Biden camp as it related to the autopen pardon spree,” Oversight Project President Mike Howell tells BlazeTV hosts Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

An email from a top official at the DOJ went out the day after the 2,500-plus commutations.

“He goes off on Saturday morning, outlining all the reasons why these are not enforceable commutations. They make no sense. They need further direction from the White House — read between the lines there: from the president and not an autopen,” Howell explains.


“And moreover, that the actual interpretation of the very vague thing that Biden allegedly announced would apply to — guess what: a lot of violent criminals. And that it did. And so in Biden’s grand, you know, commutation of 2,500-plus, caught up in there were people who shot cops, who killed witnesses, who were kingpins that are now back on the streets for the most part,” he continues.

“Silver lining: Some of them are still in federal prison because he shortened their sentences, but there’s still some are serving it out. Trump could refuse to release them,” he adds.

Peterson, while not exactly shocked, still can’t believe America really went through a time like this.

“So we really did have probably as bad, or worse, of a case, of any time in American history, a president who was dysfunctional sitting there in that office with these clowns around him.”

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3 theories behind Bondi and Patel adding a co-deputy to Bongino’s FBI role



On Monday, August 18, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey was appointed as co-deputy director of the FBI, a newly created position, to serve alongside Dan Bongino starting September 8.

This unusual move, announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, ignited a firestorm of speculation. Some theorize Bailey’s appointment is a prelude to Bongino's potential departure, or even Kash Patel’s, while others argue it aims to stabilize FBI leadership, advance Trump’s law and order agenda, or reshape the agency with politically aligned loyalists.

On a recent episode of “Blaze News: The Mandate,” Jill Savage, Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson, and senior politics editor Christopher Bedford dove into this controversy.

“I think fundamentally they need very talented people in extremely important positions to get the job done. ... [The FBI] is a large agency where a ton of reform is needed. It’s at the heart of the corruption that’s been allowed to fester in this country,” Peterson says. “So it would make sense to bring in someone who’s a very sharp, aggressive AG who’s done great work in Missouri and had a national impact.”

“That’s the positive, right? The negative is that there’s some things maybe that aren’t getting done that people think should get done, and they feel that there needs to be some change in how leadership is operating,” he adds.

Jill agrees there may be underlying factors behind Bailey’s sudden appointment. “Anytime you put ‘co-’ in front of something, it’s like, okay, what is actually happening right now?” she says.

Bedford suggests the new role might be a genuine effort to support Bongino, who, as the deputy director, has the enormous task of “[overseeing] the personnel of the FBI.”

“That’s tens of thousands of people that he’s got to deal with and got to manage. And Bongino, despite being a former officer, Secret Service agent, and despite having a very successful radio show and podcast, doesn’t have that kind of management experience,” he says.

The rumor in D.C., however, is that Bailey is there “to replace someone” — Bongino or perhaps even Kash Patel, Bedford says.

“That’s where it starts to get a little spicier because I think [replacing Patel] would start to really upset more people,” he adds, especially given Patel is the “main reason for why we have so much of this Russiagate information.”

Peterson, despite acknowledging Kash’s invaluable contributions to the Trump agenda, can’t deny that rumors are swirling that Patel’s leadership is lacking at the FBI.

“There is a lot of talk around town and elsewhere that that’s not happening and that some of these reports on the left, while no one wants to agree with them publicly, may have some validity to them in terms of how things are going over there at the FBI,” he says.

“We’ll have to wait and see, but the main thing I think we should take away from this is that Bailey is talented. Bailey is energetic, and they need more than two people at the top of this thing and whatever is going on over there. We need someone who is going to be aggressive and who’s going to actually clean house.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

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