Embattled MAGA Ohio Rep. Max Miller is being sued by his ex-wife after he released a naked photo of their 2-year-old daughter while fighting domestic abuse claims.
Emily Moreno, the daughter of Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, accusing the congressman and his lawyer, Aaron Minc, of having “recklessly published and disclosed to the world” a picture of the child’s genitalia earlier this month.
Miller, 43, inadvertently shared the photo after publishing a link to a Dropbox folder online containing a trove of documents that he claimed would vindicate him from a string of abuse allegations.
These include claims that Miller poured hot water on Emily Moreno, beat her, pointed a gun at her head, and potentially broke the collarbone of their 2-year-old daughter. The congressman has repeatedly denied the accusations.
The image was available to view online for a day before it was taken down. Moreno, 32, is seeking $150,000 in damages for each time the image of the child was downloaded from Miller’s and Minc’s Dropbox accounts.
“Faced with a mostly self-inflicted dumpster fire of public attention to his reputation for abusive behavior, Miller so desperately wanted to salvage his political job, that he recklessly and intentionally provided Minc a trove of documents and photos, indifferent about what they contained or how they were used,” the lawsuit said.
Minc previously took responsibility for the image being included in the link shared online by Miller and “corrected the file immediately” after realizing the error.
“Unfortunately, I missed the last three pages of a 40+ page document with sensitive content,” Minc told CNN. “It was completely unintentional and a mistake.”
During a car-crash interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper after the image was removed, Miller made sure to point the finger at his attorney, but denied that including it in the first place amounted to “shockingly reckless” behavior from his team.
“My attorney took full responsibility,” Miller said. “There was never any intent to do that.”
In a statement, Moreno’s attorney, Subodh Chandra, said: “This child is an entirely innocent victim who has become collateral damage to her father’s political ambition.”
Sen. Moreno has demanded that Miller be jailed for releasing the nude image of the toddler.
“He went out and did what he did, including releasing photos of my granddaughter completely naked, that now you have hundreds of thousands of psychotic human beings that have that, and to say ‘oops’ is grotesque,” the MAGA senator said on Capitol Hill.
The domestic abuse allegations against Miller, which emerged during unearthed custody battle court documents, threaten to derail his re-election chances in November’s midterms.
Sen. Moreno had been condemned for his long silence on the abuse allegations against Miller before eventually calling for him to resign from Congress.
“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,” Sen. Moreno posted on X. “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.”
In response, Miller suggested that Sen. Moreno stayed silent about the allegations because he did not want his former son-in-law to come forward with damaging claims about the 59-year-old’s own personal life.
The Daily Beast has contacted Max Miller and Aaron Minc for comment.
