Shaker Heights Public Library, the public library in the town Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) grew up.Sam Van Pykeren/Mother Jones
For the past few months, Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) has been embroiled in a growing list of scandals and allegations of harm. Miller’s ex-wife, the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), has accused the Republican congressman in legal filings of being an absentee father, abusive husband, and having a history of violence and misconduct towards women dating back to his high school days. Miller has repeatedly denied these allegations.
As Mother Jones’ Abby Vesoulis reported in July:
For instance, one of [Emily] Moreno’s legal filings in their ongoing child custody case asked Miller to comment on the accusation that he pushed a female peer down a set of stairs during his high school years.
“Why did you not pursue a defamation lawsuit against [redacted] for alleging you pushed her down a flight of stairs?”
Miller’s response: “OBJECTION; relevance, scope of admissible evidence.”
According to Politico’s 2021 report, “Miller pushed a girl out the door of his room and she fell down some stairs after he became enraged when she resisted his attempts to touch her, according to three people who were there and many more who heard about the incident in the aftermath.”
Miller categorically denied to Politico that the altercation took place. But reached for comment this month, the woman in question told Mother Jones that while the event “happened 20 years ago,” it remains “one of the more traumatic nights of my life.”
Vesoulis recently traveled to Ohio where she and our producer got a chance to speak with Miller directly following a family court hearing between him and his ex-wife. While visiting, Vesoulis made a stop at the public library in the town that Miller grew up and attended high school in. She wanted to see if there was anything more to be learned from his old high school yearbooks.
“We’re going to flip through all these yearbooks and we could find nothing,” says Vesoulis, sitting in one of the library’s study rooms. “We could find something interesting.”
Interesting, indeed. Here’s what she saw: