Once upon a time, it was practically de minimis for either political party to disavow a candidate facing allegations of domestic violence. But now is not that time.
Which might help to explain why as the divorce of young MAGA royalty— Ohio Representative Max Miller and Emily Moreno, daughter of Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno—has morphed from a deeply personal family tragedy into a highly public political spectacle, Republicans have been reluctant to say that an alleged domestic abuser (especially one facing allegations from two women) is probably a poor choice to represent their party this November.
I am referring, of course, to Miller, who Emily Moreno has accused of scalding her with hot water, holding a gun to her head, and throwing her against a wall—all allegations he has denied. (She also suggested that because of his history of violence against her, she couldn’t rule out that he had fractured their daughter’s collarbone, which he also denies.) But this is now a party whose leader has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women; a party whose president was found liable in a civil trial for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll; a party whose chief once palled around with Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious convicted sex offender. And so perhaps only in President Trump’s Republican Party does believing all women—or even some women, some of the time—become politically fraught.
[Read: The grim aftermath of the E. Jean Carroll verdict]
Bernie Moreno declared yesterday that Miller should not serve in the House of Representatives, writing on X that the past two years have been “pure hell” for his family. “Max Miller needs serious psychological help,” Moreno wrote. “He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.” He concluded by saying that he owed it to his wife, “to Emily, and to my granddaughter to speak the truth now.”
Moreno’s statement came after Miller appeared on a roughly 20-minute live stream that morning, in which he refused to drop out of his House race and explained that he strived to comport himself with “dignity” for the sake of his daughter—all while proceeding to publicly impugn his daughter’s mother.
Initially, Moreno found himself on a tiny island of Republicans who believe that an alleged domestic abuser is not fit to serve in Congress. When Trump was asked on Air Force One yesterday if he thought Miller should resign, he said he would “look at it,” but noted, “so far it’s accusations.” He repeated that stance in the Oval Office this afternoon, calling Miller “a good person” and suggesting that this is a situation that needs to be resolved within the family, not within the party. A representative for Miller declined to comment.
But by this evening, as the Senate returned and reporters pressed lawmakers on Miller’s fate, a growing number of Republicans conceded that maybe he wasn’t the best candidate, after all. Trump also reportedly called Miller today to express concerns about his candidacy, according to Axios. But a person familiar with Trump’s concerns told me that even if the president pushed Miller to bow out, they weren’t certain the young House member would heed the president’s advice.
Claims of misbehavior and anger issues have dogged Miller since at least high school, and Emily Moreno is not the first woman to accuse him of being violent.
When Miller first ran for office in 2021, former White House communications director Stephanie Grisham said that when she dated him during Trump’s first term, their relationship had turned physically abusive. (Grisham wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in October 2021 that she told both President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, for whom she also worked, about the abuse, and they did nothing.) Miller denied the accusations and sued Grisham for defamation, before dropping the lawsuit as part of a confidential settlement. That same year, a Politico profile of Miller recounted several brushes he had with authorities when he was younger, including charges of assault, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest as a high school senior. The story also detailed how Miller allegedly pushed a girl out of his room after she resisted his advances, and she fell down some stairs, an incident sourced to three people who said they were present at the time and more who said they heard about the incident in the aftermath. At the time, Miller told Politico through a lawyer that he “categorically denies” the event. A description in that profile from someone who knew Miller during his earlier years—and described him as someone who “could be very scary”—has stayed with me: “I can, like, see the red face.”
[From the June issue: The men who want women to be quiet]
In mid-July, a Mother Jones piece unearthed new allegations against Miller, based on more than 2,000 pages of court filings and police reports that writer Abby Vesoulis obtained through public records requests that contain “allegations of drug use by Miller, misogyny and verbal abuse, and violent behavior against multiple women,” she writes. A report about a collarbone injury his daughter suffered, for instance, includes Emily Moreno telling investigators that her daughter told her, “Daddy’s house is scary.” (Miller’s spokesperson did not directly address all of the magazine’s questions, but pointed to previous statements Miller and his representatives have made to other news organizations, denying he has ever been violent toward women.) Then, a New York Times article last week brought more attention to the allegations, raising uncomfortable questions for the Republican Party about why its members seem so reluctant to suggest that Miller step aside. For a time, this included Moreno himself.
I am not unsympathetic to Bernie Moreno. I am the stepmom in a blended family, and I understand a key tenet of Divorce 101, especially when there are kids, is to never speak ill of anyone involved. Moreno seemed to be trying to abide by that ideal. In a recorded conversation between Miller and Emily Moreno—made public yesterday when Miller released a collection of documents, videos and audio clips he says will help exonerate him—she described being upset Miller had lashed out at her father, noting, “My dad, despite what you may think, has never said negative things about you to me, even to this day, through this process.” She added that when she told her dad that other people have, post-divorce, discouraged her from being in regular contact with Miller, her dad disagreed and reminded her that Miller is still the father of her daughter.
Two people close to the family told me Moreno’s initial silence was at his daughter’s request: Emily Moreno does not want her own daughter to one day read about her grandfather attacking her dad. One of these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the fraught nature of the dispute, added that because of the ongoing litigation, Moreno was reluctant to say anything publicly that Miller’s lawyers would almost certainly try to use against his family, and he also feared that Miller could take out any anger toward the senator on his daughter and granddaughter. A second person close to Emily Moreno offered a similar assessment. A third person familiar told me the entire Moreno family had hoped to prevent the divorce from becoming a vicious spectacle, and that while the senator had wanted to speak out for months, he did not out of respect for his daughter and granddaughter, but has always supported her privately—including paying her legal fees, which now run in the hundreds of thousands.
Nonetheless, Miller was quick to attack Moreno’s seemingly belated response, writing yesterday on X: “If my daughter said the same thing to me, I personally wouldn’t wait two years before holding him accountable. You know this isn’t true and the only reason you are speaking out now is to hide from your own media circus. This is all political.”
And Moreno—not unlike many Republicans who at first remained silent on the Miller scandal, pleading they were not equipped to weigh in on mere allegations—has had no problem using allegations to go after Democratic opponents in the past. In a June Senate hearing, the senator alluded to the ongoing scandals involving then-Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner in a quest to “just do a little vetting here this morning.” He asked the assembled nominees before him: “Do any of you have a Nazi tattoo?” and “Have any of you ever said that women deserve to be raped and should take accountability for being intoxicated?” In an April hearing, Moreno took aim at Democrat Eric Swalwell, who had just resigned from Congress and ended his bid for California governor amid his own allegations of sexual misconduct. “What’s interesting to me is you look at the depraved individuals that serve in this body, people like Eric Swalwell—I don’t know that I’d want to be categorized the same way,” Moreno said.
Which is why, on Friday, when NOTUS asked Moreno if Republicans should replace Miller on the ticket—the deadline to do so is Wednesday—because of the accusations of domestic violence, I was surprised by the senator’s tepid reply: “I don’t know.”
[Read: A police report about a House candidate surprised the White House]
Profile in courage this was not, as many Democrats (and former Republicans) pointed out online. “Be the kind of father who doesn’t tolerate a man who abused his daughter,” Sarah Longwell, the anti-MAGA political strategist and founder of The Bulwark, wrote on X. And from former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger: “Imagine if your dad picked his job over you. @berniemoreno is a despicable man.” To his critics, the NOTUS story was just another example of cowardice by Moreno and his party. To those who know him well, the ensuing response was yet another reminder that anything can be used for political gain, even a family’s anguish.
Tonight, when reporters pressed Moreno about why it took him some time to issue a statement about Miller, his long-simmering anger seeped out. “I hope you never have to go through a situation like this, and you wouldn’t ask that kind of fucking question,” he said.
Miller and Emily Moreno’s relationship started like a MAGA romance novel: A marriage of two young MAGA scions—both from politically powerful and wealthy Ohio families—held at the president’s gilded Bedminster Club in August 2022 and attended by Trump himself. A father-in-law and son-in-law with big political ambitions, sharing the same midwestern state. But it did not end that way. Divorce filings came almost exactly two years later, in August 2024, along with mutual restraining orders issued the same day, and nasty accusations soon followed.
In his live stream yesterday, Miller denied that he was violent with his ex-wife, pointing to messages between them several days after an alleged incident, in which she offered to cook him dinner. (To Miller, this exchange is exonerating; to many people familiar with domestic abuse, this exchange is also typical of how victims sometimes try to salvage their relationships or protect themselves and their kids.) Miller also, claiming to speak from “great sadness, and not anger,” cast his ex-wife as mentally ill, saying he did not mention this “to embarrass her, or to attack her”—despite spending the majority of his address doing just that. The situation, he said, has been painful for everyone involved, “especially our daughter, who we both need to think about more so than ever, and I feel as if I am the only one who does.”
Then, for a man interested in protecting his daughter, and convincing the public he’s not the controlling abuser his ex-wife claims, he added a confusing coda: “She is a beautiful, innocent child, and she didn’t ask for any of the media scrutinization of her family, and she will eventually see all of these reports one day, as she will continue to bear my last name—Miller.”
I began digging into the documents Miller released that he said would refute his ex-wife’s claims. The collection includes a series of text messages between the two parents, filled with the quotidian challenges of life with a toddler, all further exacerbated by divorce—screen time concerns, balancing work and childcare, birthday party drop-offs.
And then there was this: Emily Moreno told Miller in February that their daughter was having another anxiety attack, similar to one she’d had previously. Miller responded: “Ugh, hold her tight and snuggle with her. I hate this for her. The only remedy I know is just to hold her tight and snuggle.”
The two go back and forth a few more times—with Emily Moreno expressing concern that their daughter told her, “Daddy kill you” and Miller arguing “there is no way she is saying that”—before Moreno offers another update the following morning. “She woke up once in middle of night for cuddles but overall much better.”
Marie-Rose Sheinerman contributed to this report.