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- [00:00]
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- [01:01]
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- [02:00]
Tim O
Hey everybody, Tim O from the Bulwark here with my buddy Roger Sullenberger, who has just kind of a bombshell of a substack post out late last week that I wanted to get to the headline. Headline really appeals to me. George Santos with a gun The Untold story of Corey Mills, a mercenary in Congress. Anything that shits on George Santos I like. But man, the details in the story are pretty eye popping. Corey Mills is this Republican congressman from Florida. Roger, I guess before we get into the details, like, give people a little bit of this guy, like how you got into the story and why he's significant.
- [02:36]
Roger Sullenberger
Yeah, I mean, Corey Mills is kind of a rank and file member. He hasn't really caught national attention. He has in some like, right wing circles on Fox News, did some like, Newsmax stuff. But, you know, he's styling himself as like a MAGA rising star. He was first elected in 2022, so he's reelected last year, both by, you know, pretty huge margins. But, you know, he hasn't really quite broken through the main. But he managed to this year, but not exactly in the best way. He, you know, in February he was reported for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend. She, you know, recanted the allegations, but she called the cops on him in D.C. for bruising her. And according to police report, he admitted bruising her, but, you know, denies it now. And most recently, he's been slapped with a restraining order for cyber stalking and, you know, revenge porn threats against a different ex girlfriend that he was seeing at the same time. While he's also, you know, technically married. So that's, you know, that's the stuff that's really kind of broken through. He's also been, you know, they tried to center him twice recently, I think, first time in like September. And then Nancy Mace introduced the censure motion like a couple of weeks ago. So that's, that's kind of how he's, you know, bubbled up to the surface nationally. But my reporting, you know, comes from.
- [03:59]
Tim O
Kind of with Hegseth there also somewhere. Not just Santos juggling two girlfriends and a wife you're not fully divorced with.
- [04:04]
Roger Sullenberger
You know, if you want to triangulate Corey Mills, if it's possible. You know, I know there's a lot of outrage fatigue. I know it's like, oh, yeah, well, they're all like that, you know, kind of attitude. You know, we're all numeral nihilists at this point. Right. But Corey Mills is a unique character. He, he is uniquely, I don't want to like explosive characters, but it's all been under, under the surface. Right. So far. And he's like George Santos, Matt Gaetz, Bob Menendez, Herschel Walker, like rolled into one person. The, the breadth of this story is astounding. And it's, it's really exhausting, you know, to go through it. If you go through that first story, that's just an overview of what I'm about to roll out. And I've got four or five reports that are more detailed coming. It's. It's really a lot to take in at once. But he's like, you know, if you're building like a World of Warcraft character or something like that, you know, you put like, you know, all your sliders up or whatever. He's like Santos Gates, you know, like Menendez, but like all of them, like up to a hundred or whatever. Like, he's like maximal, like those people. And he's. He's just flown under the radar. And I started looking into him, I guess, back in. It was in February that I really started looking at him. I saw occ, the Office of Congressional Conduct was investigating him, and I looked at his, you know, financials. Like, yeah, you know, it looks like there's something to it. But then he makes news for this alleged assault and I'm like, wait, he has that also, you know, he has these two things. There's weird financial stuff and then there's also this dimension of him. And once I started turning the rocks over, it's like there's a rock under every rock and then there's like a rock under that rock. And it just kept going and going and going. And so here we are, like nine, ten months later and hundreds of sources and thousands of pages, and it's just. It's really, really an exhausting. An exhausting enterprise.
- [06:10]
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- [07:42]
Tim O
I appreciate that you put the bulleted list at the top because it was pretty exhausting just reading through the bulleted list of all the things this guy had done. Okay, I want to get into a couple of details. One of the reasons I care about this, not that I wouldn't care about this if he was in R +40 seat. I should just say like for the politics though, putting on my politics hat like this district where he's in is basically kind of around Daytona beach at Seminole county in Volusia county in Florida and he won last time by 13 points. 56, 43. I mean Afton Bain in that Tennessee district overperformed by about that much in this last special election. These are the kinds of seats that could potentially in play, especially with a candidate like this. I do think there's potentially a political element here too. But just the details of what he did are a story in itself, maybe even a movie. I'm trying to decide where to start. So there is the financial side of this with. I guess we'll start there with this company that he co founded with his wife in 2014 called Pacm. That's what I'll say for short. P A C E M. And it is, I guess they do arms dealing and he's also on the committees that oversee, oversee the arms dealing. That seems pretty bad. Talk to us about what we know about this company.
- [08:53]
Roger Sullenberger
Yeah, like give George Santos an international weapons company. You know, like that's, that's what we're looking at. And then you know, he's, he's on House Foreign Affairs. Right. And he's also on armed services and on foreign affairs. He's the chair of the subcommittee for oversight and Intelligence. Right. Which happens just so happens to exercise jurisdiction over State Department activity. Right. Which is how his company exports weapons. It's through State Department. Like he has direct oversight of his own industry, of his own company. Somehow he's selling weapons in the, it's not like the traditional, like okay, so you have Ukraine aid and we all understand sort of what that means. Right. The taxpayer backed money and Then, like, it's federally funded with contracts with, like, Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, whatever, and export. It's like billions and billions of dollars his company sells through what's called commercial direct or direct commercial sales. And they are a lot less transparent. It's really actually pretty hard. The dollar amounts are smaller. But he's been shipping weapons overseas, or his company has, while he still owns it, while he's in Congress. And some of those weapons have gone to Ukraine. And he is very much against Ukraine aid, you know, very outspoken, says Ukraine is corrupt, it's a corrupt government. You know, we shouldn't be using taxpayer money to do this. Well, it just so happens that if we cut the federal aid to Ukraine, that opens up a lane for businesses like his. Right, which do these private sales. So it actually tilts the playing field more towards his company to, you know, pull Ukraine. It might sound like he's taking a moral position on this, you know, against his financial interest, but it really does, like, help his company. And he's been doing this, you know, for, you know, since 2023. Right. He started, you know, when he joined Congress, his company was already doing this. And as far as I can tell, like, there's no way that he can actually, you know, distance himself financially from these sales. And part of that is because the company is in such massive debt. It's a massive.
- [11:14]
Tim O
I was going to say. So, yeah, you would think this would be a lucrative industry arm sales. But you have here on the bullet, the company owes 66 million. Stop paying workers. At the same time, Mills has been spending lavishly on himself.
- [11:25]
Roger Sullenberger
Yeah, they're in foreclosure right now. They owe a foreign company. A company in Canada has been lending them money. The debt goes back years. And Corey is personally liable for this money. Right? So that means he's personally guaranteed it. He's put up, it's called, like, in one document says, unlimited guarantee. Right. So he is on the. The hook, right? He's partly on the hook with his company for the 66 million. And again, this money goes back at least to 2019. And he came into Congress with it.
- [11:54]
Tim O
Right?
- [11:54]
Roger Sullenberger
He came into Congress and his company was already in financial trouble. They, like, tried to swindle the SBA, it looks like, out of a. Out of a $5 million loan that they could. They couldn't pay back a $5 million loan during COVID while getting $1.2 million in PPP. You know, it's. It's insane to unpack this stuff. Like, how is this guy Getting money, company gain money. But the operative part here is that he's never disclosed this debt on his financial disclosure forms. Right. And typically you don't if it's business debt, but if you're personally liable for it, you have to disclose it, right? You have to say, hey, I'm a member of Congress. This is who I owe money to. This is who I'm indebted to. And he just happens to be indebted to a foreign lender up in Canada. Right to the tune right now of 66 million, you know, and he's never disclosed that. And he is on the committees that are, you know, most closely associated with what his company is. Is making money or trying to make money doing, you know, and it seems like maybe despite his best efforts, you know, may not have.
- [13:02]
Tim O
So we've got the arms dealing. And then, as you mentioned, he has had some issues in his personal life with women, to say the least. I'm going to go through a couple of them. This was. You wrote this story a while back, but about Mills. I mean, I guess this one that first catches my eye, which is he takes a covert Afghanistan mission while he's in Congress doing some exfil work, which I support in general, but during that mission, he hired prostitutes in Afghanistan while he was in Congress on a covert sex. Covert sex mission. Covert, covert expo operation that turned also into a sex mission.
- [13:41]
Roger Sullenberger
Sex mission. Yeah. So, like, this is how he sort of, like, broke through the national conversation. Right? On the. On the right. Specifically, he was in the primary at this point. You know, his district had been redistricted. Right. Stephanie Murphy was there. It was a D district and opened up to be like, what you were saying, you know, R +12 or whatever. R +17, I think was his first victory. Right. And so he's like, oh, I'm going to seize on this and run for Congress. By the way, before this, like, Corey and never talked about. And he never expressed any interest in, like, not just public office, but just politics generally. According to my reporting sources who have known him for years, it was kind of a shock to them that he ran for Congress to begin with. It lines up with the loans. You know, go figure. But he had this opportunity from Ronnie Jackson, who, you know, said, hey, I've got this constituent who is in Afghanistan. This is August 2021. The withdrawal is happening, and we need to get her out. So Corey joins up with this team, like, experienced, like, seasoned, like, tacticians and special ops guys, like, you know, the real deal. And Corey, he was in the Army. He drove an ambulance in Iraq. He was a medic. He has wildly overstated his military record. And he presents himself like he's, you know, like, you know, Eric Prince or, like, Ethan Hunt or Jack Ryan. You know, like, that's how he tries to come across in these, you know, public appearances interviews. And he's like, I'm some, like, special ops guy. So he's attached to the, like, team of real veterans, and they fly in and they get redirected to Tbilisi, Georgia. They get waved off the landing in Afghanistan, and while they're there, they're in a hotel staging this operation. And Corey's just hiring prostitutes, like, every. Every night. You know, according to my sourcing, my report is like. And it. It really freaked them out because, you know, these are guys who are flying in this place, like, really jacked up on adrenaline, and these are very serious people. And, you know, at the time, they were actually really concerned about, like, hey, like, this mission. We don't know how long it's going to take. We don't know how Harry it's going to get. And, you know, ones I talked to were, like, we were actually prepared for, like, firefights and really preparing ourselves perhaps to get killed somewhere down the line. They didn't know how long they would be doing this. And Corey's just off, you know, like, in. On another planet, and he and his buddy are doing this, and it really, you know, it puts them off. But also, like, one of them was speaking Russian. Like, Georgia has its own language, right? You know, it's a former Soviet bloc. But one of these women was speaking Russian, according to my sourcing. And that was a huge red flag, you know, like, we're going into Afghanistan, a former Soviet protectorate. And, like, you know, this is a covert mission. And, yeah, it was just incredibly reckless and endangered potentially, you know, could have endangered the lives of people he's with. But he goes on Fox News and becomes, like, a Fox News hero at the time because he's bashing Biden's State Department. You know, they must. They messed all this up. They weren't there. This woman tried to get help from them, and, you know, they wouldn't do anything. And I've got FOIA records that have emails that are saying, like, we've been reaching out to her, and she says she wants to wait on Corey Mills, like, specifically, you know, and the way it's been presented to me with my sourcing is like, this was a huge, just PR stunt. And it was so successful, though. You know, he's tried to replicate it also, like, while he's in office, he's tried to do rescues and is rescues in Israel, Haiti. He flew helicopters into North Carolina. Like, he's really trying to present himself as much a member of the Special Forces as like a member of. Of Congress. Except it doesn't really seem to be the full story.
- [17:27]
Tim O
It seems like the Russian prostitutes every night does go against something else about him, which is that he's a secret Muslim. He I guess converted to Islam in 2014 when he married his current wife and didn't tell anybody. It just doesn't talk about that. Well, the.
- [17:44]
Roger Sullenberger
Yeah, the operative.
- [17:47]
Word there is like is, right? Is. Is he like now is he, you know, a Muslim? I don't know. I don't. From my reporting, it seems like Corey is like. Is like nothing, you know, that he doesn't actually have that.
- [18:00]
Tim O
His friends, the people you talked to, you know, the ones that you talked to, said that they. That he didn't any interest in politics before. Like, what did they say about like his ex wife and. And that marriage? Like, was it real or so, you.
- [18:15]
Roger Sullenberger
Know, like he's running as a Republican, right? Like a MAGA Republican. And this is why this whole thing is. Is relevant because, you know, a lot like George Santos actually. Like George Santos. Like, his story is actually pretty interesting. Like, without the embellishment, right. Like it's. It's weird and nuanced and like if he can like, you know, carve some weird little lane in there, like, it's like, oh, that's. That's weird and interesting and like, maybe I should like, just.
- [18:40]
Tim O
Well, and he did the stealing from the old ladies and.
- [18:43]
Roger Sullenberger
Right. I mean, like, there's stuff and there's other. Right. I'm just saying, like the. By the biography. Right? And like the biography of Corey Mills is pretty interesting on its own, but he's. He denies so much of it, you know, and he. He did convert to Islam in 2014 for this. This marriage. His wife, they're divorcing now. They're still married, but divorcing. His wife was an Iraqi refugee. She actually helped the US during the Operation Iraqi Freedom. You know, she's a translator there for the DOD and State Department. And you know, she came over the United States. They met up in D.C. and for the wedding, you know, she wanted a religious wedding. And in order to do that, he had to convert to Islam. And the wedding was held at this really like, Hardline Mosque. That's, you know, it's. It's again, it's relevant because this is a. An issue that's politically like a third rail for Republicans. This mosque. Yeah, the mosque was Anwar Al Awlaki's mosque. And the 911 hijackers attended that mosque. And the Fort Hood shooter has a connection to this mosque and the mufti who. Who married them was like a. Allegedly a fundraiser for Hamas and alleged to be a co conspirator in the 1993 World Trade center bombing. You know, and they got married. I don't know if you know, how. How much Mills actually took on of the. The faith itself, whether he was, you know, really practicing or into.
- [20:16]
Tim O
It seems like not the sexual.
- [20:17]
Roger Sullenberger
More at first blush. It's like, is this. Is this Homeland? Right. Is this Homeland? But.
- [20:24]
My reporting seems to. It's not quite like that. But he has denied it. Right. He can't, I think, politically, it shows like, he can't run as a MAGA Republican in that district and get through a primary if he's honest about that. It seems to be like some sort of. It's a political confession there. But, yeah, he openly denies it and he claims to be both a Protestant and Catholic affiliations at the same time, so.
- [20:49]
Tim O
Okay, well, we barely scratched the surface with this, but I think we've given people a taste. You know, we have a fake Republican Congressman here who is, you know, embellishing his record as a liar as an arms dealer while doing supposed oversight over his industry, has some sexual harassment and assault allegations, sleeping with Russian hookers on a covert trip to Afghanistan, and also may or may not be a secret Muslim who was married in Anwar Al Awlaki's church mosque, rather. That's interesting. That's an interesting story. Lot to work with there, Roger. Was there any other top points I missed? We'll send people. Put a link for the. To your substack in the show notes for people who want the full. Want the full story? Want the full story?
- [21:32]
Roger Sullenberger
Yeah, read it. And again, like, be prepared to be exhausted, but I've got more stuff coming out, so. Yeah, I appreciate you supporting that, man. Thank you.
- [21:38]
Tim O
All right, we'll keep an eye on it. Thank you. That's Roger Sullenberger. Everybody else subscribe to this feed as well. We'll be seeing you soon.
- [21:43]
Roger Sullenberger
Thanks, man.
- [21:45]
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