U.S. Rep. Max Miller went live on X on Sunday morning for roughly 20 minutes to deny that he abused his ex-wife or their 2-year-old daughter, released a large package of court records and recordings to newsrooms, and said he will not leave his re-election race three days before the deadline for Republicans to replace him on the November ballot.

Within the hour, U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno — Miller’s former father-in-law, a fellow Ohio Republican, and a man who had declined for months to say anything publicly about the allegations — said Miller should not be in Congress.

“As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help,” Moreno wrote in a statement posted to social media. “He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”

“He should not serve in the House of Representatives,” Moreno said.

Moreno breaks a months-long silence

Moreno’s statement is a reversal of the posture his office held through the spring and summer. As recently as Friday, July 31, he told the outlet NOTUS he did not know whether Republicans should replace Miller on the ticket, and his spokesperson said he would not speak on active litigation involving his family.

On Sunday he spoke at length.

“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,” Moreno wrote. He said it had 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.”

“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 impossible,” he continued.

“If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them,” Moreno wrote. “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.”

Moreno’s assertion that Miller “admitted privately” to needing help is his own characterization and is not supported by any public document. Miller has consistently denied every allegation of abuse and has never been criminally charged in connection with any of them.

Miller answered him directly on X, replying to Moreno’s post by name.

“If my daughter said the same thing to me, I personally wouldn’t wait two years before holding him accountable,” Miller wrote. “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.”

Moreno represents every county in Ohio, including Seneca and Sandusky, through January 2031. He was a significant backer of Miller’s first congressional campaign in 2022, the year Miller married his daughter at Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf club.

What Miller said

Miller opened the livestream by apologizing for technical problems and noting it was his first attempt at the format. He said he was speaking “as a father, trying to protect our daughter,” and that he had turned down dozens of interview requests because he had concluded from two earlier interviews that reporters would not carry his account accurately.

“They frame me as an abuser,” Miller said, arguing there is no evidence against him.

“No court or agency has even substantiated any allegation against me,” he said. “Every single one of these allegations were already investigated.”

“I had nothing to hide and I have nothing to hide now,” he said.

Miller argued that the allegations track his custody dispute rather than the underlying facts, saying each surfaced at a moment when the stakes in that case shifted. He said his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, stated under oath in October 2024 that he had never harmed their daughter, and he described text messages and recordings he says show the two on friendly terms in the days after an incident she has described as an assault.

“My former wife is engaging in a pattern of reporting incredibly serious and destructive allegations with absolutely no evidence,” Miller said.

He closed by saying he would not leave the race: “I’m not getting out of this race and I’m winning in November.”

Miller also raised his ex-wife’s mental health on the livestream, saying he did so “with great sadness and not anger” and that he hoped she received care. Emily Moreno’s attorneys have previously denied she is mentally ill and have questioned why Miller agreed to give her primary custody of their daughter if he believed she was unstable. TiffinOhio.net is not reporting the specific medical claims Miller made about a private citizen.

Emily Moreno’s spokesman, Stefan Mychajliw, responded in a statement issued after the livestream.

“It is shameful that Max Miller decided to go on a bizarre and lie-filled rant about his ex-wife to desperately try to save his political career,” Mychajliw said. “There is a documented trove of evidence that Miller has a history of violent and dangerous behavior and no amount of victim shaming will change that. It is despicable and abhorrent that Miller lied on an unhinged and humiliating video for their daughter to watch one day. No loving parent would have ever used their daughter as a PR pawn to save their own political career. Miller can lie and spin on X, but he cannot do so under oath in a court of law. We are confident that justice will prevail in court.”

A 199-megabyte package sent to newsrooms

Alongside the livestream, Miller’s side distributed a document package to news organizations, including TiffinOhio.net. It runs to 199 megabytes across 67 files — 45 documents and 22 audio and video files — and its opening page identifies the source as the office of Rep. Max Miller, legal counsel. It includes child-services and police records, court filings, private co-parenting messages, recorded telephone calls, exterior doorbell-camera footage and a prewritten summary telling reporters what to conclude from each exhibit.

TiffinOhio.net is not publishing this material and will not link to it. The package states that the couple’s 2-year-old daughter is identified only by initials and that home addresses have been removed. Neither is consistently true in the files as received. The archive also contains recordings involving the child herself.

Portions of the underlying records do support parts of Miller’s account. That is a different thing from the package proving what its summary says it proves, and several of its central claims are narrower than presented.

The Dropbox link Miller directed reporters and viewers to went offline Sunday. “Apparently, there are people who don’t want this information out. Strange,” Miller wrote on X. “Don’t worry, Dropbox will be back up momentarily.” He did not say who he was referring to. TiffinOhio.net could not determine why the link stopped working.

What the livestream left out

Miller addressed the allegation that he threw hot water on his ex-wife by describing horseplay at his kitchen sink — a sprayer, tap water, and text messages he says show her laughing.

That is not the allegation at the center of his own defamation lawsuit. Court filings from Moreno’s legal team state that in 2024 Miller “threw onto Ms. Moreno hot water from a pan of eggs he’d just cooked” after she told him she planned to leave him. A court-appointed parenting coordinator testified in a May deposition that Miller confirmed the sprayer incident. The pan remains disputed. On Sunday, Miller answered the one he has acknowledged.

Miller also told viewers that on Feb. 27 a court found his sworn testimony credible and granted him a domestic violence protection order against his ex-wife. That order was issued ex parte, meaning it was based on his presentation before Moreno had an opportunity to contest it. Miller later moved to dismiss the case himself. A judge signed off on that dismissal within the past week, finding that Miller “was not under any apparent infirmity and did not appear to have been threatened by or in fear of” Moreno.

Two points Miller raised are accurate and belong in any fair account. Child-protective investigators did not substantiate the allegations against him, and prosecutors declined to bring charges. The police material indicates prosecution was declined for insufficient admissible evidence — a determination that the available case could not be tried, which is not the same as a finding that nothing occurred.

Where the case stands

Miller and Emily Moreno married in August 2022 and divorced in 2025. They share a young daughter and are each seeking sole custody. Emily Moreno has alleged in sworn court filings that Miller scalded her, held a gun to her head, threw her against a wall and caused a fracture to their daughter’s collarbone. Miller denies all of it.

On Thursday, July 30, Emily Moreno asked a Cuyahoga County judge to bar Miller from contacting her attorneys directly, swearing that he had harassed her legal team and physically touched attorney Andrew Zashin without consent. Miller sued Emily Moreno for defamation in May; she has moved to dismiss that suit under Ohio’s anti-SLAPP statute. He is also accused of violating a mutual restraining order that has been in place since June 1.

Emily Moreno is not the first woman to accuse Miller of abuse. Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham described physical abuse in a 2021 memoir and a Washington Post opinion piece. Miller sued her for defamation and dismissed that case with prejudice in August 2023, shortly before it was set for trial. Grisham brought new litigation against Miller in July, claiming he violated a settlement in which the two agreed not to disparage each other. Miller did not address the Grisham allegations in Sunday’s livestream.

Three days to the deadline

Republicans have until Wednesday, Aug. 5, to replace a candidate on the November ballot. Miller’s livestream was, in effect, an announcement that they will not be replacing him.

He faces Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker and Brook Park city councilman, on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Miller won the district with just over 51% of the vote in 2024.

Poindexter said Sunday that the allegations deserve the attention of law enforcement.

“No one credibly accused of holding a gun to his wife’s head and breaking their 2-year-old daughter’s collarbone belongs in the halls of power,” he wrote in a statement after the livestream.

Democrats have spent the past week calling for Miller’s resignation and a House Ethics Committee investigation, and have signaled that more fall resources could flow to Poindexter. U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, has said Miller should resign. Trump endorsed Miller again in May.

Ohio Republican leaders have largely declined to withdraw their support. As of Sunday afternoon, the most forceful public call for Miller to leave Congress had come not from a Democrat, and not from a House colleague, but from the Republican senator whose daughter made the allegations.