Johnson Backs Max Miller’s Re-Election Bid Despite Allegations of Abuse

Speaker Mike Johnson is not giving up on Congressman Max Miller, a Republican lawmaker from Ohio accused of abuse by his former wife. Mr. Johnson told reporters Monday that he supports Mr. Miller’s re-election campaign even though the congressman’s Republican former father-in-law, a U.S. senator, has called on Mr. Miller to resign. Mr. Miller worked for President Trump during his first term in the White House as an aide, and moved home to Ohio to run for Congress in 2022. Mr. Miller married his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, that year, though they divorced in 2025 after having one child together. Mr. Miller’s legal problems with Ms. Moreno burst onto the national political scene in late July when Ms. Moreno asked a county court in Ohio to grant her a restraining order against her ex-husband. Her lawyers claimed that Mr. Miller had a long track record of abusing her, including spraying her with scalding hot water, pointing a gun at her head, and physically abusing their young daughter. Mr. Miller has denied all of the accusations. After refusing to drop out of his race, many House Republican lawmakers remained silent. That was not true for the Senate side of the Capitol, however. His former father-in-law, Senator Bernie Moreno, also a Republican from Ohio, called on Mr. Miller to resign after he defended himself in a livestream on X earlier this month. Mr. Moreno wrote on X that Mr. Miller “needs serious psychological help” and that the congressman is a “danger” to Mr. Moreno’s daughter. “I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter,” Mr. Moreno wrote. “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,” Mr. Moreno wrote at the time. Mr. Johnson on Monday made clear that he believes this is a private family matter, and that he will support Mr. Miller’s re-election bid even though Mr. Miller is now facing an Ethics Committee investigation. “I have supported Max Miller’s re-election,” Mr. Johnson told reporters on Monday. When pressed if he still supports Mr. Miller, Mr. Johnson responded, “Yes.”“He’s been a great member of Congress. He has some issues in his personal life he’s working through. The House Ethics Committee is looking into that,” Mr. Johnson said, arguing that “due process” must prevail. Several Republican senators have called on Mr. Miller to resign, including Senator Jon Husted of Ohio, who was appointed to fill Vice President JD Vance’s seat and is now running to serve out the remainder of his term. Mr. Husted has been trailing his Democratic opponent in the polls. The accusations against Mr. Miller have put what many had seen as a deep-red seat in play. According to one poll from the Democratic firm Tavern Research, Mr. Miller now trails the Democratic candidate, union ironworker Brian Poindexter, by eight points, 54 percent to 46 percent. In an effort to try to clear his name earlier this month, Mr. Miller and his legal team unsealed hundreds of pages of documents related to investigations into alleged abuse. Each document showed that local police and child protective services were unable to corroborate the allegations.“I have never abused our daughter. Every one of these allegations traces back to a single source: my former wife,” he said in his X livestream in early August. “Ask yourself: What is continuing to change? … What changed, ladies and gentlemen, were the stakes.”“Not one of these allegations has ever been substantiated by any court or any agency,” Mr. Miller said. He accused his ex-wife of suffering from mental health challenges. Mr. Miller has hinted many times that he may have damaging information about his ex-wife’s father, Mr. Moreno, which is why the senator had declined to condemn Mr. Miller previously. Many have speculated that those vague threats are related to a 2024 Associated Press report that tied Mr. Moreno’s work email to an account that had been looking for male sexual encounters on an adult website. A former intern for Mr. Moreno later took credit for pulling a “prank” by setting up the account in Mr. Moreno’s name. The senator told reporters earlier this month that Mr. Miller’s claims that he has some kind of damaging information on the family are nothing more than “the ramblings of a madman.”

Johnson Backs Max Miller’s Re-Election Bid Despite Allegations of Abuse

Johnson Backs Max Miller’s Re-Election Bid Despite Allegations of Abuse

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