Nancy Mace offers 'stolen valor' documents involving Cory Mills. (Mark Harper, DBNJ, April 29, 2026)

From Daytona Beach News Journal:

Nancy Mace offers 'stolen valor' documents involving Cory Mills

Mark Harper

Daytona Beach News-Journal

Updated April 29, 2026, 9:32 p.m. ET

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 expulsionfrom Congress in recent weeks — offered the materials into the record during a House Armed Services Committee hearing involving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Nancy Mace says Cory Mills' Army colleagues dispute his claims of heroic rescues

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.

"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.

Mills responds on floor by offering documents he says confirm his Bronze Star

Later during the April 29 committee hearing, Mills entered into the record his DD-214, a record that covers his service in the Army, which shows a Bronze Star medal and other decorations, as well as a 2024 Army record that he said "authorizes vets and verifies all medals and/or awards."

He also shared a letter from Paul Sovitsky, a former team leader from when Mills was employed by the private contracting firm DynCorp International in 2006. The letter, as previously reported in The News-Journal, that "annotates the two explosions that I was involved in in Baghdad."

Some of Mills' other DynCorp coworkers said he was not injured in at least one of the blasts, and that he was in a vehicle 30-40 yards away. Mills, serving as the team's medic, did help patch his coworker, Scott Kempkens, and two unidentified national guardsmen who were in the vehicle that was hit by an improvised explosive device.

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During the Armed Services hearing, Mills then addressed Hegseth.

"Mr. Secretary, you're pretty familiar with the ideas of slander, defamation, and attack on character, so ... I apologize for having to take the time to correct the record, but it was necessary," Mills said. "I would also note that my (Official Military Personnel File) ... was actually released by the Department of the Army the same day as yours was, so everything is sitting on the actual website itself, if people aren't too lazy to look at it."

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?"