Max Miller: Ally to Trump’s attempted coup

Ohio Congressional district 7 candidate Max Miller was an adviser to President Trump. He was in meetings planning Trump’s January 6th rally, and he defends Trump after he tried to steal the presidency. Miller may not explicitly say the election was stolen, but does echo similar ideas. Max Miller enabled Trump’s anti-democracy efforts, and shows signs that he might undermine democracy himself.

Impeachment

Miller downplays Trump’s crimes in his second impeachment, and suggests that Joe Biden should be impeached instead over casualties in Afghanistan.

13 soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber when US troops withdrew from Afghanistan during Biden’s administration. However, casualties of war are not an impeachable high crime nor misdemeanor. An average of 15 Americans were killed in Afghanistan every year that Trump was president, and he was not impeached for that. Here are the names of American heroes who died in Afghanistan during Trump’s term from the Defense Casualty Analysis System:

On the other hand, Trump tried to block the electoral count and steal the 2020 election for himself. The bipartisan January 6th Commission has accused Trump of criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. Representative Gonzalez, alongside other Republicans and Democrats, impeached him for this while Trump was still in office. Trump was found guilty by a bipartisan majority of Senators and deserved to be disqualified from holding office again, but was acquitted since there were not enough votes to reach the required supermajority.

Miller criticizes Gonzalez’s impeachment vote “over a lie”. Trump did lie, but it was much more than that, including pressuring election officials to “find” thousands of votes for him and plans to seize election machines. However, is Miller actually admitting his boss Trump lied and trying to downplay it, or is he calling the allegation against Trump a lie?

Miller promises to disband the January 6th commission. He also said, “what happened on January 6 was not an insurrection.” Republican leader Mitch McConnell knows better, calling it a “violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election.” An Oath Keeper leader even pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy for that day.

Giving Trump and his supporters a pass for attempting a self-coup, while holding a double standard seeking Biden’s removal, is a troubling sign of Max Miller’s judgement.

Election integrity

Does Max Miller believe the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen or not? Would he vote to reject presidential election results? Voters deserve to know the answer, considering his close ties to Trump.

In the summer of 2021, Trump campaigned in Ohio to both endorse Miller and spread lies about the 2020 election, and Miller stood beside him to proudly receive his endorsement. Note that in 2022, Trump took back his endorsement of Mo Brooks after Brooks refused to “immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency”. It’s clear that Trump’s endorsement comes with an expectation to serve his continued efforts to commit a coup.

In June of 2021, Miller tweeted, “The media weaponized lies to define President Trump and the 2020 election.” He references a Lafayette Park incident, but doesn’t say how he believes the media lied about the election. Is he merely blaming the media for smearing his candidate, or implying other election conspiracies more broadly?

The assessment of the “most secure election in US history” comes from a Republican member of Trump’s own administration, Chris Krebs. Trump fired him after making those comments.

Although the 2020 tallies were highly accurate, Trump-aligned Republicans made numerous efforts to overturn those tallies. There are also efforts across the country to make voting access more difficult. For example, 13% of mailed ballots in Texas were recently rejected during 2022’s primary elections. These are valid reasons to pursue federal voting rights protections.

Miller opposes Democrats’ election reforms, but he seems to be questioning the security of the 2020 election at the same time. He suggests that election integrity may not be strong enough:

He says he will “stop the Democrats from rigging our elections.” Is he saying the last election was rigged, or merely opining that Democrats could rig future elections? Voters deserve to know.

Miller plans to join the Election Integrity Caucus, where 78% of its 55 members voted to reject the 2020 election and another 7% signed on to the Texas lawsuit attempting to throw out the results.

That caucus pledges to “drive commonsense policy solutions” and “real policy outcomes”. If Miller enacts voter ID laws while in Congress, he’d be doing the same thing that he derides as “federalizing elections”, just with a different policy.

It’s within reason for the federal government to protect voting access, and also to ensure states have leeway on how best to run elections within those parameters. However, policies like voter ID can be implemented in discriminatory or overly burdensome ways, especially in the hands of anti-democracy leadership. Unless he admits that Trump was wrong about the election, Max Miller cannot be trusted to strike the right balance to protect our democracy.

Relationships

Miller is engaged to Emily Moreno who also has connections to the Big Lie. She worked for her father Bernie Moreno’s Senate campaign. Bernie initially accepted Biden’s victory, but later ran campaign ads saying “President Trump says the election was stolen, and he’s right.” Bernie dropped out of the Senate race at the request of Trump.

Emily previously worked for Senator Ron Johnson, who had announced intentions to reject 2020 presidential votes, but ultimately voted to accept them. She also created a dating app for Trump supporters called Donald Daters.

Food shortages

Miller also seems willing to mislead voters in other ways. He falsely suggests there were no food shortages under Trump, claiming that “Americans never had to worry” about that.

In 2020, Trump’s last year in office, many stores had empty shelves, including meat shortages. Exports of staples like wheat were restricted around the world due to the pandemic. Trump had said there were “no shortages”, blaming the problem on hoarding. However, supply chain issues caused some produce to rot on farms, unable to reach consumers. When a customer sees there’s no meat or no bread at the store for a prolonged period of time, that’s a shortage, regardless of the causes.

Biden warned of food shortages in 2022, especially wheat, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Pandemics and wars disrupt supply chains regardless of who is in the White House, but partisans like Miller want us to blame their opponent while holding their guy blameless.

Aligned with Loychik, who has shown authoritarian tendencies

Max Miller embraces the endorsement of hard right State Rep. Mike Loychik, who has some of the same problematic rhetoric.

Loychik also falsely claimed there were no shortages under Trump:

More importantly, Loychik dismisses Trump’s offenses while calling for Biden’s impeachment:

Trump was first impeached for withholding aide to Ukraine in exchange for “a favor” to smear rival Joe Biden, hardly an innocent phone call. Even Republican Rob Portman called it “inappropriate and wrong”.

Downplaying Trump’s abuse of power, while doubling down on it by also threatening Biden, is consistent with Loychick’s authoritarian tendencies. He has made demands to imprison Dr. Fauci and Hillary Clinton, and even for the arrest of dozens of Texas legislators for travelling out of state. Would Miller make similar authoritarian calls while in office?

Cheering on the defeat of Liz Cheney

Rep. Liz Cheney is a leading Republican congress member holding Trump accountable for his lies and attack on our democracy, but Miller celebrated her primary defeat at the hands of an election denier, considering it a moment of pride.

Miller wins primary, on to the general election

On 5/3/22, Max Miller won the Republican primary election, defeating rival Jonah Schulz by a huge margin. He also defeated Democrat Matthew Diemer in the November general election.

Further reading

Cleveland.com: Ohio congressional candidate Max Miller says he’s being subpoenaed by the committee probing the Jan. 6 riot

Politico: Donald Trump’s pick Max Miller has a history of aggressive behavior