Vem Miller, the man arrested on gun charges Saturday outside of a California campaign rally for former President Donald Trump, has sued Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco for defamation, saying Bianco’s claim that local authorities had “probably stopped another assassination attempt” was false.
The lawsuit , which named not only Bianco but also the County of Riverside and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, was filed Tuesday in federal court after Miller was taken into custody near the Coachella event over the weekend. Riverside officers had stopped the Las Vegas resident at a security checkpoint and allegedly found that he had firearms, as well as multiple passports and driver’s licenses with different names.
Bianco said Miller was driving an unregistered vehicle with a “homemade” license plate, and that his weapons included a shotgun and a loaded handgun with a high-capacity magazine.
Miller, a podcast host who in 2022 made a failed GOP bid for the Nevada State Assembly, was charged with possession of a loaded firearm and possession of a high-capacity magazine. He was briefly booked and then released on $5,000 bail.
After the arrest, Bianco told reporters that homemade license plates are “indicative of a group of individuals that claim to be sovereign citizens” — a term for a far-right movement whose members believe the U.S. government has no authority over them.
He also remarked, “If you’re asking me right now, I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt” — a reference to the multiple apparent attempts on Trump’s life this year.
But on Sunday, federal authorities released a statement on the Coachella incident, saying that Trump was never in any danger.
On Monday, Miller told the Los Angeles Times that Bianco had “committed career suicide” by suggesting that the Las Vegas man, a self-identified Trump supporter, tried to assassinate the former president. Miller claimed that he’d brought weapons to Trump’s event for self-protection after receiving death threats for his work with The America Happens Network, his media company.
“As of right this second, I could prove everything they said is untrue,” Miller said. “It’s just going to be bad. He’s going to lose his job.”
In a video posted to the conservative-leaning website Rumble, Miller said that he was an “actual invitee” to the Trump event and had received a “special invitation from members of the Nevada Republican Party.”
Sigal Chattah, Miller’s attorney, likewise stated in Tuesday’s lawsuit that Miller was “provided expedited special entry passes by the Trump 47 campaign directly” — raising questions about how, or if, Miller received such an invitation to the Coachella event.
The Trump campaign, which seeks to elect the Republican as the 47th U.S. president, told HuffPost that there was “no record of [a] credential or press pass” issued to Miller.
Chattah, who also serves as a national committee member for the Nevada GOP, did not return HuffPost’s requests for comment.
HuffPost reached out to leadership of the Nevada GOP and heard back from only one member: Vice Chair Jim Hindle. Hindle said he had “no information” on who might have credentialed Miller or invited him to the event.
“Certainly not me,” Hindle said.
Speaking to NewsNation , Bianco elaborated on his thoughts about Miller following federal authorities’ Sunday statement.
“I can understand their statement of what they said,” Bianco remarked. “We arrested Mr. Miller before President Trump arrived, so there obviously was not a threat at that time.”
He added: “Of course he’s going to say he didn’t do anything and he wouldn’t have done anything, but it still doesn’t change the fact that we had to contact him for what we contacted him for, and he was on an inner perimeter with weapons.”
The sheriff lamented that the topic had been made “political.”
“Right now you’ve got Democrats attacking us, you’ve got Republicans attacking us, because they’re trying to stick up for someone that claims to be a pro-Trump person,” Bianco said. “It’s irrelevant. All that we know is it was my responsibility to keep that place safe, and he tried to bring guns to a rally.”
In addition to defamation, Miller accused authorities of invading his privacy. He argued that officers engaged in “deliberate and wrongful conduct” and violated his “constitutional rights for the purpose of promoting and engaging in a meritless and gratuitous sensational story.”
The Coachella case comes after two apparent assassination attempts on Trump in recent months. Ryan Routh faces federal charges after he was accused in September of planning to shoot the former president at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, with a rifle. Routh has pleaded not guilty. Another man, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed by the Secret Service in July after Crooks fired at Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
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