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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:01]
B
I'm Andrew Egger, joined by my colleague Will Sommer to talk about some really startling breaking news we have had out of Ohio Congressman Max Miller today. He's a Republican congressman, has been dogged by a number of scandals for quite some time. Today he decided to get on a live stream on the Internet and tackle some allegations against him head on. And we have had a lot of crazy developments. This story basically all day today. So Will, can you set the stage for us a little bit? What's what's been going on with, with Max Miller and some of these allegations against him?
- [01:36]
C
Yeah, so this is Max Miller, the congressman from Ohio, seventh district. You know, one of the aspects here is that this is a battleground district. Democrats think that this scandal could help them, you know, take this seat. His ex wife is Emily Moreno who notably for this story is the daughter of current Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, also a Republican. Basically Max Miller is someone who been dogged for a very long time by accusations of violence, whether it's towards his now ex wife, towards other women, towards people. He was, you know, politico and now just a few weeks ago Mother Jones have done a lot of reporting on this. People really want to like get into the records but basically, you know, this is a situation where you know, his ex wife claims that he threw hot water on her, that he held a gun to her, that he, you know, I think among the most serious allegations is this question of whether he broke his two year Old daughter's collarbone. And so there's a lot of this now is being kind of litigated in the public. And the reason we're here to talk about it today is because on Saturday night Max Miller said, I will be making an address at 10am on Sunday. And then he did this video and I don't think a lot of people thought he was going to drop out because he's kind of been digging in on this when he put out this sort of bizarre video, really kind of attacking his ex wife and claiming he's innocent. And then he even released a Dropbox of supposed evidence. And so it's a very weird situation. Bernie Moreno has responded. Yeah. And there's a lot to dive into here.
- [03:06]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So let's try to tackle it all sort of sequentially. The first thing I would say is that, I mean this is really the first time that this has jumped forward to be like the story. Right. I mean, I think the conversation, there's been a conversation for a number of weeks as these stories have come out, almost like this meta conversation of why aren't we talking more about Max Miller? Why isn't this provoking more scandal, you know, when there are other candidates who have seen their personal scandals really capsize their races. He had been very quiet about a lot of this stuff. There had been a lot of talk about, like you said, how his, his father in law or his ex father in law is the father of his ex wife is Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, who had not weighed in again until today as we're going to get into it. So it's, first of all, it's strange that he would kind of get the bit in his teeth and decide to really go head on and make this the story of the day by, by doing this video and by like, like you said, releasing all this evidence. But let's just go to the video here. Let's, let's do a little bit of, of give you a little taste of what Max Miller' argument is here, which is basically, this is a bunch of stuff ginned up by my ex wife who's on some kind of mission against me. So let's hear from, let's hear from Max Miller.
- [04:22]
C
Very weird video.
- [04:23]
D
All good.
- [04:25]
A
All right.
- [04:26]
D
Sorry about the technical difficulties, everyone. It's our first time doing a live stream and I just want to say hello. I wanted to come on here live to address these allegations that the media has been putting out non stop. This isn't about defending myself. I'm speaking up as a father trying to protect our daughter. And let me begin with the most painful accusation of all. I have never abused our daughter before. I go through the facts with you today, understand one thing. Every one of these allegations traces back to a single source. My former wife. I filed for divorce in August of 2024. That October, she admitted under oath that I had never harmed our daughter. Every accusation has come since. So ask yourself what is continuing to change? Not the facts. There's never been evidence of any kind. What changed, ladies and gentlemen, were the stakes.
- [05:37]
B
Yeah, so maybe let's just stop there for a minute. You can kind of see what's going on here. It's this strange, like, transparency play. First of all, insane to do this sort of unscripted in this way by just going live, like he says, for the first time ever from his campaign to talk about this stuff in particular. I guess I should preface a lot of this. This is all stuff that we're all kind of getting up to speed on ourselves. Right? Like we have not been following in excruciating detail, you know, the divorce case between these two people. We can't necessarily weigh in on the veracity of any specific allegation here or anything like this. But first, the one thing I wanted to say is that that first thing he said, that all this stuff traces back to one source, which is his ex wife, Emily Moreno. That's not true. I mean, like, there has been a lot of different allegations from different women that have, that have been bubbling up about Max Miller for quite some time. Right.
- [06:32]
C
Well, let me, let me just lay it all out here. And I mean, if we can go chronologically, I mean, we have. There's an allegation that Politico reported on when he first ran for office that basically he had, you know, going from sort of a smaller incident to where he had punched a guy and been arrested for. The charges were dropped. He had allegedly pushed a girl down the stairs at his high school as a high school student after she refused his advances. You know, there are, there was, in the, in the divorce case, this comes up where there's this allegation that something happened that he, he had some other violent incident towards a woman at his college. It's a little unclear there. And then, you know, when we start to get a little more contemporaneous, we have an incident where he dated Stephanie Grisham, who folks may remember as the first. As a secretary in the press secretary in the first Trump administration. And she alleges that while were dating, he assaulted her. And, and the, these the allegations from his ex wife have also been out for a while. And I. I just want to flag something, since we just played that clip. He put out this Dropbox, so an online folder with all this supposed evidence. What was striking is he says, look, my ex wife says in this affidavit, you were talking about our divorce. Has he ever harmed your daughter? And they. And she says, no, but that was from 2024. This incident with the collarbone was from February 2026. So anyone with any understanding of how time works would understand that, yes, she could have said in 2024 that this had not there had been no violence. And by the way, the child would have been, like, months old at this point. So, you know. Yeah, okay, thanks. Thanks, Max. Then, you know, in February of this year, the collarbone incident happens, allegedly. And, you know, it was taken very seriously by Child and Family Services. I would really recommend people check out the Mother Jones reporting On this from July 18th if you really want to, like, get into the guts of this case. I init initially, when I read this story or when I saw his video, I thought, well, okay, I'm interested to see what's in that affidavit and how does that square with this allegation? But then when you look at it and you say, well, there's clearly an explanation. It happened in different years. It happened before this alleged incident. It makes you wonder, you know, how guilty is this guy? How credible is the rest of this information he's putting out?
- [08:42]
B
Yeah, there is an element of just kind of flailing to a lot of it. I mean, it's stuff like that. It's stuff like, well, why would she have said I'd never abused this. This girl if I were to abuse her later? I mean, like, just stuff that doesn't really make sense on his face. There's other stuff in here that, I mean, we can. We can play another clip here. Let's do. Actually play one more clip here. Because another thing that he kind of frequently comes back to is he keeps pointing to, you know, these exchanges that he and Emily Moreno are having, you know, as their divorce plays out and as they hash out custody and things like this, where they're. They're being sort of cordial and pleasant with each other and. And he keeps saying, well, you know, would. Would she have cooked me dinner days later if abused her on thus and such a date as she now claims? Let's just. Let's just hit a little bit of that before we go further.
- [09:28]
D
She then offered me more extra overnights with Our daughter, which I can prove to every single one of you is recently. Every one of these messages is timestamped on our court sanctioned co parenting app and is all in the packet. Only weeks later did the story of February 1st assault appear. So ask yourself, if I had assaulted her, would she had offered to cook me dinner six days later?
- [09:54]
B
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. What do you say about that, Will?
- [09:56]
C
I mean, it's striking to me that, you know, while, as you said, we don't know the veracity of these allegations, this idea, like the idea of a battered wife then working to cook dinner because she's kind of terrified of her husband is almost like a stereotype. And so this idea that this person continued to have contact with me at all or tried to stay on cordial relationships, I mean, if you believe Emily Miller, Emily Moreno, and she was terrified, understandably. This guy who allegedly held a gun to her, you know, among other things. So the idea that like they then still remained in, she tried to stay cordial with him, I. I don't think was very convincing.
- [10:33]
B
Yeah, I mean it's kind of one detail after another. Like the more you look into this case, the more there's just kind of like, oh, that's sort of strange type stuff that pops up. I mean, when she, when she first filed for divorce, she completely took him by surprise with it. She bought a new house without his knowledge, this has been previously reported. Took their stuff and their kids to that new house. Basically before she had given him like a sense that anything was up and then kind of sprung it on him once, once they were all, you know, one way of looking at it would be safely out of the way. Right. And I mean you can, there are perhaps other ways to read that, but one way to read that would be this is a woman who is afraid of this guy. Right. I don't know. We should jump now to one of the specific things. So you mentioned the Dropbox thing. The whole, the whole thing was so weird. I can't stress enough how weird it was to sort of watch this roll out. Because first the Dropbox that he uploaded, anybody could drop new things in that Dropbox and so they had to take it back down really quick and he put it back up later. And it's got all this, all this stuff in it. It really, it really, it seems to be kind of in keeping with this kind of strategy you sometimes see on, on the. Among the very online where just like by pumping out a lot of documents that's supposed to have a Credibility all its own, even if the documents don't necessarily add much just because you're saying, look, I'm putting all the primary texts up and letting people see for themselves. But whatever this strategy was supposed to accomplish, one thing it did accomplish that has unequivocally been extremely bad for Max Miller is that it finally shook again his former father in law, the father of his ex wife, out of his silence. And people have been wondering, what the heck is Bernie Moreno thinking as all these allegations have been piling up. And he tweeted this. I'll just read this. This is from Bernie Moreno. As a father and husband, I can tell you the last two years have been pure hell for my wife Bridget, our daughter Emily, me and our entire family. In the aftermath of Emily's divorce, it has been horrific to watch this play out in full public view, all while knowing an innocent two year old girl is caught in the middle. Our priority has always been protecting our daughter and our granddaughter. Out of concern for the safety of my family, I hoped to keep this matter private. But Max Miller's increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that imposs. As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help. He is a danger to my daughter and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter. If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives. I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake. I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does. I ran for office because I wanted to make a difference for the country. That gave me every opportunity to succeed and to leave this nation. Better for my children and grandchildren. That sacrifice has been especially hard on wife Bridget, whose big heart and steady support have never wavered. I owe it to her, to Emily and to my granddaughter to speak the truth. Now that would be a staggering statement from anybody in relation to a case like this, from, you know, any, any party to, to allegations like this. It is just crazy that, that a wrinkle in this story is that this is one of Ohio's two Republican senators. I mean, it's crazy.
- [13:46]
C
That line about, you know, I hold my breath every moment he has custody of my granddaughter is craz. You know, this is. Bernie Moreno was previously in the news, you know, last week because he took her. He had a real tough guy routine with Anthony Fauci in the hearing. And so, you know, he was like really going after Him. And so people were saying, you know, that as you said, this Max Miller thing has been bubbling for a while, but then saying, you know, okay, so you're going to go after Anthony Fauci, you're going to do all these no comments on your ex son in law. I think among the other missteps Max Miller has made here. And this is something we see over and over, whether it's reporting me too stories when these things start coming out, when often the, the, the victim is kind of trying to move on or there's, you know, they're trying to get past it with the minimum amount of attention. But once you have someone denying it as Max Miller comes out and he says, and actually she's the crazy one in all this, that is typically when the victim or the, or their family, they say, all right, enough is enough. We're not gonna, you know, now he's on the offensive. Now we're really gonna open up and reveal all this other stuff. So I think that that sort of politically is the risk he's, he's taken here. If I could just talk about what's in this Dropbox, as you said. I mean, a lot of this stuff is just like, you just throw it out there and then your partisans, such as they are. I don't know about the hardcore Max Miller stands, but like, they can, then they can become very versed in the material. And then the average person who doesn't care, you know, enough to like learn every listen to all the audio, they'll say, well, I don't know, these people seem pretty passionate about it. And they got all these screenshots. It's really weird material. You know, the. I listen like one of it, they're having like an argument and there's like seemingly like a dog loudly snoring or something in the background. It's very, it's hard to know what to make of it. You know, our colleague Brendan has been poring over these. You know, one aspect is there's a point where then keep in mind, folks, Max Miller put this out himself. This is exculpatory, allegedly. She's saying, you know, I found needles in your bag. Are you on drugs? And he says, you know, well, I used to be on testosterone or I was on some kind of, you know, you know, masculine, you know, enhancing medication. And so he's putting that out. It's, it's striking.
- [15:56]
B
It's hard, it's hard to talk about this stuff. Like it's, it's, it's so gross. On the one hand and so sad and then on the other hand, just so ludicrous and sort of surreal and just strange. And he's such a strange figure and has been, you know, for forever. I don't know. Let me, let me dial back around to the Moreno tweet because Max Miller then got on and responded to it and he had this to say. He said, bernie Moreno, 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. So on the one hand, totally bog standard Trump era Republican response to any personal scandal. Right. Is this is politicized. This is a witch hunt. This is a media thing. You should be mad at the media for talking about this and not at me for allegedly doing it or not doing it. Right. But on the other hand, the person he's talking to is another really prominent Republican in his state. And I think that more than anything is probably what is for better or worse. And it's kind of insane that this is the case. But that more than anything is what may actually really be politically damaging to him here. Because there has not been a Republican effort to push Max Miller out of his reelection campaign up until now. I mean, I think, I don't remember who it was. Somebody on our staff was reporting just this past week that, you know, there's nobody in the House that has called for him to suspend his reelection campaign on the Republican side. But now, now that this is not just Republican against the media, but that it is this intra Republican fight, there's like cover almost. You've started to see this just today, like people in conservative media really coming forward and saying, well, you know, I just read the Mother Jones story and man, this guy sucks. He's been credibly accused of a lot of crazy stuff and there's a lot of smoke there. And it's not just a where there's smoke, there's fire thing. A lot of this stuff's been corroborated by various people. And so I wonder if the fact, again, it shouldn't have to be this way, but I wonder if the fact that now he is picking this intra Republican fight with a very pro Trump Republican in Bernie Moreno makes it now easier for a lot of people in his party to finally jump off and try to push him out ahead of what is it the August 10 deadline would be when they would need to replace him on the ballot. Do I have that right?
- [18:23]
C
Yeah, I mean, that's right. I mean, there is a very political aspect of this. I mean, and if you're looking at this, there's kind of this political theater. You know, I think we've seen this in the past with someone faces a scandal, certainly like the Access Hollywood tape and Donald Trump. And then it's kind of like their party sort of says, well, let's see how you play this out. You know, and so it sort of feels as though Max Miller was given maybe a day or two to kind of try this defense. I think if you look at it from the political theater aspect of it, I mean, that video, from what people heard and saw, it's not very convincing. I feel like he did not project confidence. He also pioneered some, like, new mispronunciations I've never heard before. He said things like, you know, even my wife's psychologist, like, like he just sounds like a guy who's kind of making it up as he goes along. And, and, and so, you know, getting back to your point, I think it is very unfortunate, but I, I think worth noting that I think people seem to not really care in the Republican Party about these various allegations involving him and many women. Right. Several women. And now only now that it's kind of like, hey, you can't insult this Republican senator. I, I think will people.