When he first ran for Congress, Max Miller offered a tidy version of a bad night: back in 2011, he crashed his car, but his lawyer said "a blood test conclusively established that Mr. Miller was not impaired." Newly surfaced toxicology reports tell a different story — one involving ecstasy and a prescription sedative.

What the records show

According to The Daily Beast, toxicology reports — obtained by Mother Jones and published July 18, 2026 — show that when Miller crashed into a light pole in 2011, he had MDMA (ecstasy) and Klonopin in his system. Not just alcohol.

That flatly contradicts the story Miller told publicly. After Donald Trump endorsed him in 2021, Politico reported the crash, and Miller's attorney answered that "[a] blood test conclusively established that Mr. Miller was not impaired." His blood alcohol was under the legal limit — but the toxicology reports show controlled substances in his system too. (He had told the officer at the scene he'd had "two to three beers and several shots" the night before.)

In other words: the reassuring line Miller fed voters when he entered politics appears to have been false.

Why it matters

A decade-old car crash might not be disqualifying on its own. People make mistakes when they're young. But this isn't really a story about 2011 — it's a story about 2021 and beyond, when a candidate for Congress looked the public in the eye and shaved the truth to make himself look better.

If Miller downplayed drug use behind the wheel to clean up his image, it goes directly to whether you can trust what he says now. And for Max Miller, that's not an isolated question.

A pattern of "take my word for it"

Miller has repeatedly asked the public to believe his account over the evidence — and the evidence keeps coming up short:

• In June 2025, Miller claimed a driver hurled antisemitic threats at him in a road-rage incident on an Ohio highway. Prosecutors indicted the other driver on felony counts, but on the morning his trial was to start he pleaded guilty to three misdemeanors and the felonies were dropped. Hours later he sued Miller for defamation, claiming data from his Tesla contradicts Miller's account. Miller stands by it.
• He is currently fighting two separate court battles over domestic-violence allegations — one from his ex-wife, one from his ex-girlfriend. He denies both and has sued his accusers.
• He has a personal record of charges between 2007 and 2011, including assault and disorderly conduct.

Each time, the playbook is the same: deny, minimize, and dare people to prove otherwise. The 2011 toxicology reports are one more instance where the paper trail doesn't match the story he told.

The bottom line

Voters can decide how much a 15-year-old crash matters. What they shouldn't have to accept is being lied to about it. Max Miller's lawyer told Ohio he "was not impaired." The toxicology reports say ecstasy and Klonopin. When a politician's convenient version keeps getting contradicted by the documents, that's not bad luck — it's a habit.

The allegations in Miller's ongoing lawsuits are claims he denies and has not been criminally charged over; the 2011 toxicology findings come from records obtained by Mother Jones and reported by The Daily Beast.

Source

This post is based on reporting from The Daily Beast, drawing on records obtained by Mother Jones (July 18, 2026) and a 2021 Politico profile.