Republican Rep. Max Miller of Ohio, a former aide to Donald Trump, has long professed his innocence, though that doesn’t change the seriousness of the domestic abuse allegations against the two-term incumbent.
As The New York Times reported this week, Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno, “has said that Mr. Miller scalded her chest and stomach by throwing hot water from a skillet at her body; held a gun to her head; pushed her against a wall and hit her head; and fractured their daughter’s collarbone and bruised her shoulder.”
According to court documents, the article added, their 2-year-old daughter at one point told Moreno, “Daddy kill you.”
The GOP congressman has denied the claims and accused his ex-wife of being a dangerous and mentally unstable liar, and time will tell how the brutal family dispute is adjudicated in court. But as the allegations and counter-allegations play out in public, House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked why Graham Platner’s scandals forced the Democratic Senate candidate from the ballot in Maine, but related scandals surrounding Miller and Republican Cory Mills of Florida haven’t affected their standing in GOP politics.
“The key word there is ‘allegation,’” the Louisiana Republican replied.
In other words, Republican members of Congress such as Miller and Mills have been accused of serious misdeeds, but they’ve denied any wrongdoing; they haven’t been convicted of anything; and the allegations haven’t been proved in any kind of formal setting.
That’s true, though the House speaker’s position sheds light on the contemporary GOP’s standards, and the degree to which they’re at odds with how Democrats approach their own scandal-plagued members.
When Maine’s Platner, for example, faced serious allegations, Democrats didn’t wait for a formal investigation. They found the claims credible; they assessed the available evidence; and they quickly abandoned him. When then-Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California faced related allegations, Democratic officials did the exact same thing.
No one heard Democratic leaders tell the press, “The key word there is ‘allegation.’” What the public instead saw was party leaders show their scandal-plagued members and candidates the door.
More to the point, GOP officials took the same stance in the not-too-distant past. Twenty years ago, there was a Republican-led Congress working with a Republican president in his second term, just like now. At the time, the GOP suffered through a difficult “culture of corruption” era, featuring an astonishing number of Republican lawmakers who were caught up in ugly scandals. Names like Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney and Mark Foley became nationally notorious for a reason — and in the 2006 midterms, the party lost its majority.
Four years later, after Republicans retook the House majority, GOP leaders went out of their way to make clear that they wouldn’t allow a replay of their earlier troubles. The new Republican majority, House GOP leaders said, would embrace a “zero-tolerance policy” for members caught up in embarrassing controversies that reflected poorly on themselves and the party.
For a while, they even seemed to mean it. In 2010, then-Rep. Mark Souder of Indiana acknowledged that he’d had an affair with a congressional staffer. GOP leaders urged him to resign, and he did. Less than a year later, then-Rep. Chris Lee of New York was caught trying to meet women through the personals section of Craigslist. GOP leaders urged him to resign, and he did.
In 2014, then-Rep. Vance McAllister of Louisiana was filmed kissing a staffer who was not his wife. GOP leaders urged him to resign, and although he refused, at least they made an effort. (McAllister lost his re-election bid soon after.)
In each of these instances, House Republican leaders didn’t simply leave matters to voters. They didn’t care that the members hadn’t been formally charged with any crimes. They didn’t punt concerns to the Ethics Committee. For all of their faults (and there were many), GOP leaders set standards and enforced them when members were caught up in scandals.
Years later, Johnson appears to have discarded those standards for reasons he has not yet explained.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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