Rep. Max Miller publicly took the first questions from a reporter regarding the shocking claims made by his ex-wife in an ongoing court battle on Tuesday as he sat down for an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Miller is accused by his ex-wife of scalding her with hot water and physically abusing both her and their daughter, whom Miller’s ex-wife claims had her collarbone broken by the Ohio Republican congressman. Those claims, which he denied in a video message on Sunday morning, were first revealed publicly by Mother Jones, detailing court documents filed in a defamation case Miller is pursuing against his ex-wife. Her father, U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, echoed those accusations and told reporters on the Hill this week that his daughter lives in fear of Miller and what he might do.
The interview Tuesday was tense, though Miller never lost his temper, as Tapper repeatedly pressed him about heartwrenching statements his daughter was alleged to have made about him and the home where she stays with him temporarily as part of a shared custody agreement.
At one point, the anchor questioned whether he was being inconsistent in his own characterization of his daughter’s verbal abilities.
“There is a police report from the suspected child abuse incident in February involving your daughter, and that report details that the child protection team says that your child had a right clavicle fracture, and “a bruise that accompanies the injury that appears to be in a handprint and appears to have been inflicted,” Tapper told Miller.
”Your ex-wife stated to police that your child told her in the days leading up to the discovery of the injury, quote daddy kill you, and your ex-wife also said your child had said, ' Daddy angry and daddy's house is scary,” he continued.
“Jake, I wish you could talk to my beautiful baby girl. She can't string together sentences like that. She's two and a half years old,” the congressman responded.
Tapper then shot back: “You just told me that she had said that she was scared to go to mommy's house.”
“She is. I have video of it,” said Miller.
“But now you're saying that she's not capable of saying ‘Daddy kill you?’” asked Tapper. “I mean, it seems like she's either able to say one but not the other. That doesn't make sense.”
Miller responded: “Jake. To be very direct, this is incredibly disturbing...You have to look at the timing of everything that is taking place, right? What about due process?”
Miller would repeatedly insist throughout the interview that he’d been investigated for the claims made by his ex-wife, and found to be innocent. He had no explanation for why his ex-girlfriend Stephanie Grisham, a former Trump White House aide, was also accusing him of abusive behavior, though he denied them as well.
And Miller invoked the allegations of lewd and unconsensual sexual behavior leveled at Donald Trump during the 2016 election cycle as he vowed to stay in his race for re-election.
“There are now three women who have accused you of violent behavior. Are all three of these women who don't know each other lying?” asked Tapper.
“Yes,” said Miller. “In 2016, when Donald J. Trump faced the most extreme allegations in the world that hit him day after day after day...guess what? He stayed in and he was resilient.”
At another point in the interview, he turned to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as he explained why the Daily Mail had obtained pictures showing syringes found in his bedroom. During recorded conversations with his ex-wife Miller released as part of a trove of documents related to his divorce proceedings over the weekend, his ex-wife can be heard accusing him of having a “drug problem”.
“This is testosterone replacement therapy. People are painting this as something that it’s not. Secretary Hegseth, who is the Secretary of War, just three weeks ago, allowed our entire military, who are males, to take testosterone replacement therapy. That's what I was doing. I have not been using any illegal drugs. This is nonsense.”
Miller is running for his third House term in a relatively safe Republican district in Ohio, but the nature of the allegations has some Republicans fearing his chances of holding the seat.
One of those Republicans is Trump himself. Now facing the first midterm cycle of his second term, the president is staring down the likely possibility of his party losing one or possibly even both of their twin congressional majorities to the Democrats in the fall. Miller’s shaky candidacy could make the Democrats’ path to taking the House an easier prospect.
Trump reportedly called Miller on Monday to express his doubts about the congressman’s candidacy, but Miller said Tuesday that he would remain in the race.
Complicating the matter for him is his former father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno, a fellow Republican, who spoke to reporters this week about how his daughter Emily lives in “constant fear” of the congressman, and has urged him to drop out of Congress.
“This is truly the seventh level of hell,” Moreno told reporters on Monday. “This has been a horrific experience for my entire family.”
“My daughter lives in constant fear of this man, not like something that’s existential, but deeply in her heart, she fears what this guy is capable of,” he continued.
