Hey, that folks, it is Friday, May fifteenth. Then woo. We know divorce can be ugly, but divorce DC style is something else. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ where we have a divorce that pits a congressman against a senator's daughter. Yes, we've got the House versus the Senate almost and these are sitting active members of Congress we're talking about, and a divorce and a daughter in the middle, and serious robes, we should say. It's very serious allegations.
There are, yes, and this could be race altering allegations that are taking place because the congressman in question is up for reelection midterms this year and so he is especially bent out of shape that allegations are being hurled at him by a senator's daughter. Yes, their divorce may have been finalized, but their custody arrangement.
Hasn't and that is part of the issue.
And they have been fighting. Now, this is a pretty quick robes and her name is Emily Moreno, but there was a pretty quick situation for them. Married in twenty twenty two, had a baby in twenty twenty three. He files for divorce in twenty twenty four, they're divorced by twenty twenty five, and here in twenty twenty six, he has now filed a defamation suit against his ex wife Rhodes. How do we go from love to defamation suits in four years?
Yeah, it's it's been quick, and it's been it's been fast and furious. As they say, we're talking about Ohio Congressman Max Miller. He's a second term congressman trying to be reelected for his third term. And yeah, you could say that things have escalated between him and his ex wife, Emily Moreno. They she is, by the way, the daughter of Senator Bernie Moreno. I actually that was not a name that was super familiar to me. He is a
first term senator. He notably is backed by President Trump, and some would say because of that beat the Democratic incumbent Shared Brown a Shrod Brown. So that certainly is a name most of us are familiar with. And Ohio we talking about, even though I just mispronounced his name.
Sure, yes, he's making a comeback right now. Actually, but yes, this is in all important Ohio. But he's not one of the more high profile members of the Senate, but still very important state, very important senator, they all are. But yes, it's his daughter that we're talking about.
Yes, And so what we have is Congressman Miller filing this defamation lawsuit this week, and its cites that he has suffered considerable reputational and financial harm that was caused to him by his ex wife's accusations that he was quote a violent and abusive husband and father.
Rogues, you can't get any worse than that in accusations of a guy who puts himself out to his community as a man and as a as a man, a family man. So even if you lose the wife, they'll still forgive you, but they don't want to hear your bad father as well. So drove damning of an accusation that a politician can get. So, yes, he's coming out swinging.
He certainly is, and he is alleging that his ex wife, along with her attorney and her law firm, spread knowingly
false information about him to media outlets. And he names the tabloids that we are all too familiar with, and he says that yes, they just printed verbatim whatever Emily Moreno and her attorneys told these tabloids which would not be shocking and just wrote it as if it were true, and that has undermined his chances of reelection, although he just won his primary and he is the front runner
by the way right now. But he says he suffered actual damages in the form of lost business opportunities reduced campaign contributions that he says he can show from the time the allegations were made to reduce campaign contributions, and he needs those to help with his reelection campaign to Congress.
He's being accused of being an abuser. Yeah, he's being accused of being a criminal. He's being accused of beating on a woman. He's accused of beating on his wife.
Is very serious, Yeah, very specifically, he's accused of throwing boiling water on her.
Okay, that's ugly. Yes, he's denying all of this. We should make sure we say now he's denying it all, But that stuff gets out there wades, and it's hard to unring ned bell as we know.
Yes, so, she Emily Moreno has made several allegations. But yes, one of the more notable ones, and the more recent one, is that he threw boiling water at her.
He denies it.
And she claims she even and she sent this out and it was published by some of these tabloids. This alleged handwritten apology note that she claims he wrote to her after he did this. But in his lawsuit, Congressman Miller says he has never hurled boiling water on moreno or otherwise battered her, nor has he ever apologized for such acts that he never committed.
That is what his lawsuit states. But she has been documenting what she claims.
Are bruises, red marks, burns, and selfies, and she's gave those pictures to the outlets, and she says those show and prove that she has been physically abused by her ex husband.
Uh oh props. They said, this is a reckoning for Congress here lately with swallwell and how many other resignations did we see? They can't remember the guy from Texas right now, already forgot his name, the congress one from Gonzales, Florida, Gonzales and laid in Florida with all the fraud, And
they say this is a reckoning drain the swamp. How tolerant are the colleague is going to be in a midterm year when they have to go back and answer questions possibly or attached to this guy who's accused of beating on his wife, ropes that he needs to get in front of it. He needs to file a defamation suit.
Absolutely, because the allegations were also that he abused his daughter. Now he has said categorically that that is not true and claims that the Child and Family Services, because he was investigated because she made these claims, all deemed those claims unsubstantiated. And that should be pointed out because anyone can make any allegation to Child Protective Services and they are forced under law to follow up as we would expect those investigations. But he said, and these are verifiab well,
that those were deemed unsubstantiated. He also shared an audio recording of his ex wife after this alleged boiling water incident, where his ex tells him you are a very kind person and I don't think you would ever hurt me physically. So he's got recordings, he's got text she has texts, But they have literally been recording each other surreptitiously to try and then show see I didn't do this, or see you're making this up.
But it's a lot to go through.
It's a lot of back and forth and unfortunately, yeah, it's being hurled and displayed publicly, and that is his issue. Like, take me to court, take me take this to the police, don't take it to this tabloid who shall not be named.
It's not far fetched what he's alleging about. We we know this happened. This is yes, this is a thing. So it doesn't mean the allegations are not true. But these tactics too, are something that are unfortunately done and they are disgusting.
It is disgusting.
What we're talking about is a guy Robes who is just being destroyed. He might lose his he's going to lose his reputation. Possibly, he's going to lose possibly the job he has and loves. I don't know. You could say he deserves it because she has to be listened to, right, she has to be listened to.
But here's where I think we stand, just given everything we've been through. When you get publicly eviscerated by people who potentially have a reason to or have a desire to motive, who have a motive to motive, yes, and there's nothing more personally motivating than feeling rejected by or upset by a divorce or something that happened that led up to the divorce. But the point being is that should stay for a family court. That should be I
think limited to a police department. If you've got legitimate criminal complaints against someone, take them to the police. If you have legitimate concerns about abuse, take them to child protective services.
But when you take them directly to a tabloid.
That insinuates you are out to destroy and damage someone just for revenge.
Else would you do it.
There's no other.
Reason, no other reason. These are just ugly tactics that take place to where Robes you don't know what to believe. But I'm told, is this not those stance we should take? Now we have to listen to her and we have to believe her. How can you balance then, Robes as maybe a voter in his district, I have to believe her as a victim of domestic violence. Then that means I'm labeling him. How do I balance or give him any kind of fairness in judging him even as a candidate.
If I have to believe her, I'm always fat What do we do? Nothing's been proven, but he's been labeled that, and we're always told we have to robes, consider the story that's being told. They're never believed. Robes, they're never believed. So what do we do now?
It's tough because obviously you have to as a human being, allows space for both of them to be telling in part some truth and in part maybe perhaps it's an embellishment or it's a complete lie. You don't it's hard to know, and that's unfortunately something that the constituents are left to grapple with because it is not something that is known as.
Fact or provable by fact.
And yes, you can show a picture, but you if you don't have video of the incident, it's hard to know what you're looking at and why you're.
Looking at what you're seeing.
Hear this, and we've heard it so many times, actually, people in our personal lives. We've heard these things before. After the first years of marriage, three years, all you're doing is collecting evidence against each other. Sad I had to hear they got a picture this, You've got a recording of this. Gotta da da da, Like what is so? Obviously something broke down pretty quickly and immediately in their relationship, But just to hear this is ugly stuff. And yeah,
a US senator. Well, I haven't seen anything from him about it.
I haven't seen anything from him.
I know that in the midst of all of this he has Miller, in terms of his legal case, has called for the senator to be subpoenaed, so he may be involved if this actually does go to trial in any way. But this is interesting because we're not done here. You see, when mister Miller, Congressman Miller filed this defamation lawsuit against his ex wife, his ex wife's team spoke up pretty quickly and they say that Congressman Miller is quote running the same play against a woman with photographs
of her bruises and burns. Mister Miller will not silence miss Moreno the same way he silenced Stephanie Grisham. We will tell you, we will tell you who Stephanie Grisham is. And this is a big part of this story. When we come back and welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ, where we are talking about this escalating back and forth between Congressman Max Miller and a
Senator Bernie Moreno's daughter, his ex wife, Emily Moreno. Congressman Miller just filed a defamation lawsuit against his ex wife. She has been making very public accusations against him of physical abuse towards her and towards their daughter, and he is fighting back and he.
Has to go to work every day with his ex father in law in the building.
Awkward.
That is a little awkward. He did write him a little note on X. He's only made a couple of comments on X, but the first robes he made was quote, it is unfortunate that Bernie Moreno continues to fund and enable his daughter's malicious campaign to ruin my life, despite his knowledge of her mental health issues. Bernie, this must be distracting for your job. These antics harm your own grandchild.
Anytime you want to put a stop to this. You can not the harshest of things that should be kept in house to see a family airing this stuff out like this. That's it's just unfortunate.
It really is, And especially through the halls of Congress. We talk about things echoing through the halls of Congress. This isn't what you want to hear reverberating. It's really ugly, and it's pretty nasty. And look, it's kind of a similar situation. I say that we end did before the break talking about a woman named Stephanie Grisham. Who is
Stephanie Grisham. She is Congressman Miller's former girlfriend. But it was when he was working at the White House, he was an aide to President Trump in his first term. He was dating the one time White House Press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham.
I don't remember, not at all. I don't remember that at.
All at all. How did she serve? Long?
Was it a I don't think so.
He went through a few, didn't he.
Yeah, so she was among them.
So Stephanie Grisham was at one point the White House Press secretary, and Congressman Miller was then a White House aide to President Trump. He was making his first run for Congress back in twenty twenty one, and she wrote a book about her time at the White House, and in that book she raised allegations about a former White House staffer who had physically abused her while they were dating. He was later identified as now Congressman Miller, but she did not put his name in her book.
But everyone knew she was talking about him. So what did he do? He filed a defamation lawsuit against her.
As he did. Where'd you get on that one, though.
Well.
He voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice in August of twenty twenty three, just as the case was about to go to trial.
Okay, none of this sounds okay. This is one of those things where we go Okay, I know it looks bad, but hear me out. That's kind of the position he puts. He finds himself in back to back women that he dated, back to back women that he had serious relationships with, and back to back allegations of violence and abuse in that relationship.
Okay you yes.
One could look at it as that is a pattern of abuse, this is who he is, and another could look at it as his now ex wife was currently with him when this was all going on. She talked badly about Grisham, saying that she was a vile and evil person who was making up lies. But she certainly knew that this hurt her then husband, bothered him was actually taking he was. His reputation was being at least chipped away at by these allegations, and so she knew
how to get him. You could argue, if she was angry about the divorce, if anything didn't go well, she knew that this was his achilles heel. Another woman had already made these accusations. So if I make them, I will certainly be believed and I can bring him down because of it.
That we should know, nothing was ever proven in that case. It was investigated as well, the allegations in that first relationship, so that must be noted. But Roode, that's going to now come up, and all of this is getting This is going to get uglier and ugly. I haven't seen his opponent if they're using this against them yet.
Not well, I don't know if he's doing it yet. But his opponent is Democrat Brian Poindexter. He is a five term local councilman. He's a union iron worker, and yet he's trying to take Miller's seat. He wants to flip Ohio seventh congressional district in November from Republican to Democrat.
And look that's not.
Anything, of course, that the Trump administration would like to see happen. So he you know, we're talking about Representative Miller is now the Republican primary opponent going into November. Right now, he is ahead, what will this potentially do to him? And certainly this had to be part of his motivation for filing this defamation lawsuit.
Yeah, this is I don't know what it looks like in his in his district, grobes, but I just we hate that these things get aired out in an ugly way. Tabloids involved, divorce involved, emotion involved, and a kid is involved with get three two three.
Two years old, little girl two years old.
That's that's the biggest tragedy of it all, just to see this all unfold, like they can't even hand off. He's got a restraining order against her and she's got allegations against him. So it's just one of these really difficult things. How do you even share custody in that type of environment. That poor little girl is absorbing all of that energy. She is the biggest victim of it all.
And certainly you always would hope and wish that parents who are divorcing and parents who even hate each other can at least put that aside for the betterment of their child, but we rarely see that actually happen.
Took the words right out of my mouth, that'll be in there, and with that, I'm going to leave you Robes with this as a reminder. I was curious didn't remember Stephanie Grisham at all as the press secretary. He had secretary, He had four during that first term. I forgot about several of them. Kaylee Mcinanny, Oh yes, I do remember that. Okay. Stephanie Grisham was before that, Sarah Huckabee Sam.
Oh my goodness, the current governor of Arkansas.
And then Sean Spicer, he was.
Oh my goodness, it's funny fifteen.
Interestingly, I know I remember all of those names except for Stephaniemers.
How long did she last?
Does it just O for a No, not quite a year.
That's longer than I would have even thought.
It was like ten months.
Maybe I guess she was no. Carolyn Levitt, Carolyn.
Levitt doing a thing. Congrats again on the baby. Get back. They need you there in the briefing room. I with that, folks. I always appreciate you spending some time here with us. I'm TJ. Holmes On. I have of my dear Amy Robot. We'll talk soon.