COLUMBIA COUNTY, Fla. — The showdown between the reigning Miss United States and a sitting Florida Congressman played out in a Columbia County Courtroom Friday morning.
Lindsey Langston is seeking a restraining order against Congressman Cory Mills (R-FL 7th District), accusing him of stalking and threatening to release sexual videos of her.
Both Langston and Mills took the stand Friday.
“Somebody please help me because I don’t know what to do and I’m scared,” Langston said through tears during her testimony.
Langston, who is also a Republican State Committee Woman, broke down in tears multiple times while on the stand as she described her fear of Mills.
The two dated for three years, but after breaking up in January, Langston claimed Mills began sending threatening messages.
“May want to tell every guy you date that if we run into each other at any point. Strap up cowboy,” Mills wrote in one message included in the initial police report filed in July.
“When you tell somebody to strap up, you are telling them to bring a weapon to the confrontation or a fight,” said Langston, who also made multiple references to the Congressman’s access to firearms throughout the hearing.
In other messages included in a police report, Mills makes references to sending videos.
Langston claims those were threats to release sexually explicit videos she’d sent him while they were dating.
“I was beginning to panic because that could ruin my reputation,” said Langston.
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Mills also took the stand.
He pushed back on Langston’s interpretation of his messages, claiming they were in response to a threat made against him by a man she was seeing.
“She even sent me a text that was cropped that just said ‘good luck,’ saying that this was his response to you,” said Mills.
He also claimed he no longer had any sexual images of Langston.
Instead, he claimed the videos he was talking about in his messages were clips showing the two of them together at the same time he believed she was seeing another man.
“The videos was videos of us showing that we were together probably around the same time that she was also with this individual,” said Mills.
Mills suggested there may be political motives behind the accusations.
He claimed Langston was initially represented by former Republican State Representative Anthony Sabatini, who ran against Mills in 2022.
“And Miss Langston and I had many at-length conversations about the vile nature in which he has attacked me throughout the campaign, but also afterwards. And so, I found it a bit opportunist that he was being put onto this case,” said Mills.
Because the hearing ran long, the court went into recess before a decision on the restraining order request could be made.
The hearing will reconvene at a yet-to-be-determined date.
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