Attorneys for Rep. Max Miller said he fabricated testimony in court documents and in court to support a protection-order request against his ex-wife, a sharp turn in a bitter custody fight that now centers on whether his legal team misled the court.
In February, Miller’s lawyers filed a statement from the congressman saying his girlfriend was inside his home during a Feb. 1 custody exchange. He later declared in a notarized Feb. 27 statement that she was there the entire time, that she had given statements to DCFS and a private investigator, and that she did not hear any commotion. He also pointed to surveillance footage, including from a Ring doorbell system, and said it showed Emily Moreno in a good mood and showing no signs of domestic violence. During a court hearing on Feb. 27, he was asked whether the footage showed the girlfriend was present immediately before the exchange.
Moreno has said Miller grabbed her by the arm and shoved her against a wall during that Feb. 1 exchange. Nearly two weeks later, Miller’s attorneys told Moreno’s lawyers they had learned the girlfriend was not likely present at his home during the child exchange, though they still argued the video-recorded handoff showed no altercation between Miller and Moreno. On Monday, Moreno’s lawyer Andrew Zashin demanded that Miller’s legal team drop or amend the request for a protection order against Moreno. After the lawyers declined, Zashin filed a motion on Wednesday asking the court to sanction them and order them to pay Moreno’s attorney fees.
Zashin called the congressman’s civil domestic violence claims meritless and said they were being used as leverage in the contested custody case. Miller brought the domestic violence case against Moreno in a bid to block her from seeing their 2-year-old daughter, making the accuracy of his sworn statements central to both the protection-order fight and the custody dispute.
The latest filing does not explain how the mistaken claim about the girlfriend’s presence was made, but it leaves Miller’s side facing a harder question than the one that started this case: whether the protection-order request can survive after his own lawyers said the testimony underpinning it was not true.
