Lawyers for Emily Moreno filed on Thursday for a restraining order against Ohio congressman Max Miller, saying he had harassed and threatened the legal team handling the case. The filing turns a bitter family dispute into a new legal fight just as Miller is denying fresh abuse allegations from his ex-wife.
Moreno is the woman at the center of the case, and the mother of Miller's 2-year-old daughter. Police reports obtained by ABC News say she described multiple violent incidents during their marriage and divorce proceedings, including one in which Miller threw her against a wall and left an obvious grab mark on her upper arm. She also told officers he had held a gun to her head and thrown hot water on her, and that her child once told her, “Daddy kill you.”
The allegations are serious, but they have not led to a criminal case. Miller was never charged with a crime, and records released in court filings say the Department of Children and Family Services did not find evidence to substantiate child abuse allegations. Miller has denied abusing his wife or daughter and, in a defamation lawsuit against Moreno, said the claims were “a repeated pattern” meant “to ruin my reputation, gain an edge in custody and litigation matters, and seek revenge.”
That denial has not quieted the fallout. The allegations now hang over Miller's reelection bid in Ohio's 7th District, a safe Republican seat, and some Democratic members of Congress have called for an ethics investigation and his resignation. Miller's office has pointed ABC News to his past social media posts denying the abuse and attacking earlier reporting on the matter.
The case is also tangled with Miller's earlier clash with Stephanie Grisham. In 2021, she wrote in a memoir that she had been physically abused by her partner while working at the White House, later identifying him in a Washington Post op-ed as Miller. Miller denied her claims and sued her for defamation while running for Congress in 2023, and the two later reached a confidential settlement.
What comes next is now a court question as much as a political one. The restraining order request filed Thursday has not been resolved in the material provided, and the immediate issue is whether the court will act on Moreno's lawyers' claim that Miller's conduct toward them has crossed a line while the broader allegations keep building around him.
Bernie Moreno, Emily Moreno's father, has not publicly entered the legal fight itself. A spokesperson for him told The Washington Post that his top priority is “the safety and well-being of his daughter and granddaughter,” a line that captures how deeply the dispute has already spread beyond the courtroom.
