Attorney Aaron Minc says he alone is responsible for including a sensitive image of Ohio Rep. Max Miller's two-year-old daughter in a publicly shared file dump, a mistake that has drawn allegations the photo may constitute child sexual abuse material.
Miller posted the Dropbox folder on X on August 2, 2026, alongside a nearly 20-minute video in which he denied domestic abuse allegations from his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, and declared he would not leave his reelection race. He invited "everyone who is interested to take a look" at the files, which he said his personal lawyer had assembled. Within hours, the folder had to be swapped out. By August 4, Moreno's attorneys had sent a formal letter alleging the image "could be considered Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)," and Miller had announced he was requesting an ethics investigation into himself.
The episode marks the most damaging turn yet in a bitter personal and political conflict between a sitting Republican congressman and the family of a sitting Republican senator, a fight that has spilled from custody court into the halls of Congress and onto national television.
Minc's statement, first reported by USA TODAY via a Mediaite report, left no room for ambiguity about who he says is at fault.
"To be clear, this was completely my fault. I am solely responsible for what happened. I was the only person responsible for assembling, creating, reviewing, adding, deleting, redacting, or making any changes to the information and files that were in this folder."
He called the inclusion of the photo "completely unintentional and a mistake" and said he corrected the file "immediately" once he discovered the problem Monday morning. Minc did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. Neither did Moreno's lawyers.
Miller echoed the defense in a CNN appearance, telling anchor Jake Tapper that he did not share the image himself. He told CNN he believed the situation was being weaponized against him.
"I didn't do this. My attorney took full responsibility. I believe that it's awful. There was never any intent to do that."
Miller also disputed the characterization of the image, saying on CNN: "There was no genitalia of my daughter that was exposed, and this is once again a very salacious headline."
But Moreno's legal team sees it differently. Their letter to Minc, posted publicly by a New York Times reporter, alleged the daughter's genitals appear visible in the photo and pressed Miller's side with pointed questions: "Who removed the images from the second folder and why? Was it because someone realized that it was ill-advised (and in the case of potential CSAM image, illegal) to share these images with the world?"
Moreno's team demanded answers by end of business August 5, including who vetted the Dropbox before it went live, who accessed and downloaded the image while it was public, and "what are you going to do about this?"
The timeline raises its own problems. Miller posted the first Dropbox link at 10:23 a.m. on August 2. At 11 a.m., he posted again to clarify that he had paid his personal lawyer to produce the folder. By 11:35 a.m., a second Dropbox folder link appeared via a Facebook post saying the original was "back online." Breitbart reported the folder had garnered more than 204,000 views before the problematic content was corrected.
That number matters. If the image was accessible for any significant window, thousands of people may have seen or downloaded a photo that one side's lawyers now allege could meet the legal definition of CSAM. Whether anyone in law enforcement is investigating that question remains unclear from available reporting.
The photo itself traces back to a text conversation between Miller and Moreno from February 18. Miller told his then-wife he was taking their daughter for an x-ray because he had noticed a bruise while bathing her. Moreno asked for a photo, and Miller sent an image file. Moreno's court filing alleges this same image appeared in an earlier sub-folder within the Dropbox dump. USA TODAY noted the photo is no longer visible in the active Dropbox link it reviewed.
No criminal charges have ever been filed against Miller, and child welfare authorities did not substantiate the abuse allegations concerning his daughter, Fox News reported.
On August 4, Miller posted on X that he was opening an ethics investigation into himself "to clear my name from these horrific attacks on myself and family," adding that he has "nothing to hide." He told supporters in his video: "I'm not getting out of this race, and I'm winning in November."
Congress already has a formal mechanism for ethics matters, the Office of Congressional Conduct and the bipartisan House Committee on Ethics. Whether those bodies had acknowledged or accepted Miller's self-referral was not clear as of the article's publication. Speaker Mike Johnson has so far sidestepped the domestic abuse allegations against Miller, declining to intervene directly.
Breitbart reported that the House Ethics Committee announced a formal investigation into Miller for alleged domestic violence, abuse, and illegal drug use, a broader scope than the Dropbox photo alone.
The most striking political development may be the public intervention of Sen. Bernie Moreno, the Ohio Republican who is Emily Moreno's father. After two years of silence on his daughter's allegations, Moreno made his first public comments on August 2, saying Miller should not serve in the House and needs to seek professional help.
Moreno went further in a statement reported by Breitbart:
"As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help. He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter."
Miller fired back on X, calling Moreno's response "all political." That framing is difficult to sustain when the critic is a Republican senator from your own state, and the grandfather of the child at the center of the dispute.
The Dropbox folder was not limited to documents and photos. Miller also released secretly recorded audio from an August 20, 2024 confrontation with Emily Moreno, apparently intending to undercut her claims. The New York Post reported that the recordings instead corroborated key elements of Moreno's allegations, including her expressed fears about Miller's drug use and a hot-water incident. In the audio, Moreno can be heard saying: "I'm honest-to-God scared."
Miller admitted in a separate recording to receiving testosterone replacement therapy but denied steroid use, a denial he had also made under oath in custody proceedings. A police report referenced by the Post noted that the couple's daughter had been diagnosed with a broken collarbone and "what appeared to be a handprint bruise" on her shoulder.
Emily Moreno's spokesperson, Stefan Mychajliw, called the video a "shameful," "lie-filled rant" made by Miller to "desperately try to save his political career." Moreno's legal team has also sought a restraining order against the congressman's contact with her attorney, another marker of how far this dispute has escalated.
Miller won his district with just over 51 percent of the vote in his last race. Democrats have called for his resignation, requested a congressional ethics investigation of their own, and are directing resources toward Democratic opponent Brian Poindexter. Fox News reported that the party senses vulnerability in a seat that should be safe Republican territory.
President Trump offered only tepid support, calling Miller "a good person" but declining to take sides: "It's a very sad thing... But it's accusations, and I'm going to let them figure that out." Trump has privately signaled that Miller's reelection bid faces serious headwinds.
Miller faces a Wednesday deadline to potentially drop out of his race. He has shown no sign of doing so.
Minc's statement absorbs the blame but answers almost nothing. It does not explain why the folder was not reviewed before a sitting congressman posted it to his hundreds of thousands of followers. It does not address whether anyone downloaded the image during the hours it was publicly accessible. It does not say whether law enforcement has been contacted. And it does not explain how an attorney assembling a file dump in the middle of a defamation lawsuit and a custody fight managed to overlook an image of a naked toddler.
Miller sued Emily Moreno for defamation in May. That lawsuit is ongoing. The ethics investigation is just beginning. The custody battle continues. And the August 5 deadline set by Moreno's lawyers for answers is hours away.
When a congressman's own lawyer has to publicly admit he accidentally shared a photo of the congressman's two-year-old daughter that the other side's attorneys call potential child sexual abuse material, the question is no longer whether the situation is out of control. It is whether anyone involved has the judgment to get it back under control.
