House Republican leaders really didn’t need another controversy surrounding one of their members, but late last week, one emerged anyway.
NBC News reported that the local police department in Washington, D.C., had begun an investigation into Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida.
Washington police were called to an apartment building last week over a report of an alleged assault. The alleged victim told NBC News in a text message that she “reached out to law enforcement to address a personal matter.” A police spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that Mills is the subject of the investigation but added that he had not been arrested and no charges had been filed.
In a statement from his spokesperson, Mills denied any wrongdoing.
“Law enforcement was asked to resolve a private matter at Congressman Mills’ residence,” the statement read. “Congressman Mills vehemently denies any wrongdoing whatsoever, and is confident any investigation will clear this matter quickly.”
This week, the allegations took a more serious turn. According to NBC News:
The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., sent an arrest warrant on Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., to interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s office on Friday, a spokesperson for MPD told NBC News, but the warrant has not been signed by the federal prosecutor. The case could essentially die at this point, the spokesperson said, meaning it may never result in criminal charges. The status of the warrant was first reported by NBC Washington.
Without more information on the nature of the underlying allegations, it’s difficult to assess the details of Mills’ controversy. That said, it’s fair to say that the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington does not often write up arrest warrants against sitting members of Congress.
Complicating matters is that interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s office, for reasons that are not yet clear, apparently chose not to act on the arrest warrant.
Again, we’re working with a limited set of available facts. It’s possible, for example, that the federal prosecutors in Martin’s office concluded that the case against Mills was thin and that the evidence did not warrant additional action. It’s also possible that Martin, a controversial partisan activist who has expressed confusion about the nature of his responsibilities, decided to go easy on a Republican member of Congress as part of a broader political agenda. While we wait for additional details to come into focus, however, it’s difficult to give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, this story comes on the heels of the controversy surrounding New York City Mayor Eric Adams, which came on the heels of federal prosecutors abandoning a criminal case against former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (a Nebraska Republican who had already been found guilty of corruption by a jury), which came on the heels of Trump’s Justice Department taking steps to abandon a criminal investigation against Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee. NBC News’ report added that there is an internal police investigation underway into how the situation was handled. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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