Coverage spread: 2 sources — 1 left · 1 center
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Allegations from two former partners
Republican Rep. Max Miller, 37, who represents Ohio’s seventh congressional district, is facing mounting pressure to resign as he campaigns for re-election, following domestic abuse allegations from both his ex-wife and a former girlfriend. Miller has denied all the allegations.
His ex-wife, Emily Moreno, a conservative policy adviser, is the daughter of Ohio’s Republican U.S. senator, Bernie Moreno. Miller and Emily Moreno married in 2022 and share a two-year-old daughter; their divorce was finalized on December 18, 2025, and they have been locked in a custody battle since 2024. Testifying earlier this year in connection with a defamation lawsuit Miller filed against her, Moreno alleged that Miller once threw hot water from a pan he had just used to cook eggs at her. She has also accused him of holding a gun to her head, according to reporting by the New York Times, and said he “regularly speaks to me in an inappropriate, aggressive and demeaning manner,” which she argued was not in their child’s best interest. A prominent anti-gun-violence group has since called for Miller’s resignation over the gun allegation specifically.
Separately, Miller’s former girlfriend Stephanie Grisham — who served as White House press secretary during Donald Trump’s first term — has also accused him of abuse. The two dated from 2019 to 2020. In a 2021 Washington Post op-ed, Grisham described a past relationship that had “turned abusive” and a partner who had been “physical” with her, without naming Miller directly, though it was widely understood at the time that she was referring to him; she later confirmed this. Miller sued Grisham for defamation over related comments, then dropped that suit as part of a confidential settlement. Grisham has now filed a new lawsuit alleging Miller violated the terms of that settlement through remarks he made in a June interview with Spectrum News.
Miller’s response and a public family feud
Miller has firmly denied the accusations. Speaking to Spectrum News in June, he called the allegations “false,” emphasized that the divorce was finalized in December 2025, and noted that no police reports were ever filed against him. In May, Miller escalated the dispute publicly on X, accusing his father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno, of funding and enabling what he called his daughter’s “malicious campaign” to damage his reputation, while also asserting that the senator was aware of his daughter’s “mental health issues” and that his actions were harming his own granddaughter.
In response, a spokesperson for Sen. Moreno told the Guardian that the senator’s top priority is the safety and well-being of his daughter and granddaughter, and that while he would not litigate the matter through the media or respond to what the statement called “baseless public attacks,” he would do “whatever it takes to ensure a just outcome for his family.”
How coverage compares
The Guardian’s account is the most detailed of the pieces reviewed here, laying out the specific allegations from both Emily Moreno and Stephanie Grisham, the legal history between the parties, and the public statement from Sen. Bernie Moreno’s office. It frames the story around growing pressure on Miller to resign, citing the reaction from an anti-gun-violence group as evidence of that pressure. The Hill’s headline signals a related but distinct angle — House Democrats and ethics scrutiny of Miller — though the full text of that article was not available, so it is unclear from the material at hand what specific ethics complaint or process House Democrats may be pursuing, or how it connects procedurally to the abuse allegations. Readers should note this gap: the Hill’s framing suggests a congressional/ethics dimension to the story that the Guardian’s account does not directly address in the text provided.
Where the sources overlap, they agree on the core facts: two women, an ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend, have made abuse allegations against Miller; he denies both sets of claims; and there is an active, tangled web of litigation — a custody dispute, a defamation suit Miller filed and later settled with Grisham, a new suit from Grisham alleging he broke that settlement, and testimony from Moreno in connection with a defamation case Miller brought against her.
Why it matters
The allegations against Miller intersect several high-profile threads: a sitting House Republican up for re-election, a sitting Republican senator whose family is directly entangled in the dispute, and a former Trump administration press secretary with her own public history of describing an abusive relationship. The unresolved nature of the legal disputes — no police reports have been filed, according to Miller, and the custody and defamation cases remain pending or recently settled — means the underlying facts of the abuse allegations have not been adjudicated in a criminal context. Nonetheless, the public nature of the accusations, the family rift with a sitting senator, and the emerging ethics angle referenced by the Hill suggest this story is likely to keep generating pressure on Miller as his re-election campaign continues.
Sources
Featured photo: U.S. Embassy Jerusalem via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)