Max Miller

CLEVELAND - U.S. Rep. Max Miller has fired back at a Westlake doctor who sued him for defamation after a road rage confrontation on I-90 last year, filing legal papers that accuse the doctor of a premeditated, antisemitism-fueled attack and claim the doctor’s attorney and a Tesla data firm conspired to fake evidence to help him escape felony charges.

The April 24 filing in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court paints Dr. Feras Hamdan, 36, not as a spontaneous road-rager with a political grievance, but as a man who spent nearly two years monitoring the Jewish Republican congressman, repeatedly expressing a desire to confront him physically, and finally acting on that obsession on the morning of June 19, 2025.

In February, Hamdan pleaded guilty to obstructing official business, reckless driving and disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to a year of probation and 100 hours of community service. Hamdan was given a suspended sentence of 86 days in jail and credited with time served for the four days he was locked up after his arrest.

Miller agreed with the plea, according to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office spokesperson Lexi Bauer.

On the day of his guilty plea, Hamdan filed a defamation lawsuit against Miller that accused Miller of lying about the encounter and claimed he hadn’t threatened the Rocky River Republican. The case is assigned to Judge Jennifer O’Donnell.

Miller’s 142-page legal filing tells a different story. It seeks damages in excess of $25,000 on multiple counts, as well as punitive damages and attorney’s fees.

“Dr. Hamdan pleaded guilty to crimes arising from a premeditated, antisemitic attack on a sitting United States congressman,” Miller’s lawyer, Larry W. Zukerman, said in a statement. “His own recorded words, recovered from his own cell phone, tell the story in devastating detail. Filing a defamation lawsuit against the victim of your own criminal conduct is not just legally meritless; it is an affront to the justice system. We intend to hold Dr. Hamdan, and everyone who helped him try to escape accountability, fully responsible.”

A statement from Hamdan’s lawyer, Peter Pattakos, called Miller’s legal filing “the legal equivalent of a monkey throwing its feces at the walls of its cage.”

He said it changes “nothing about the essential facts of this case: Miller has been exposed for having completely fabricated accusations against Dr. Hamdan to serve his own personal and political interests, and is now facing accountability for his lies.”

Pattakos said Miller’s counterclaim didn’t address the data pulled from the Tesla, “which has proven that Hamdan never swerved his vehicle during the alleged incident, that Hamdan’s car windows were closed during the time when Miller claims he made the alleged threats, and that it would have been impossible for anyone to hear any such threats from another vehicle, traveling at highway speed, even if both parties’ windows were down.”

He also called it a “clear violation of Hamdan’s civil rights” for law enforcement officials to give Hamdan’s private cell phone data to Miller, and said its release constitutes “actionable breaches of Hamdan’s privacy rights, including under the Fourth Amendment and Ohio’s common law, and Hamdan is currently exploring all legal options in this regard.”

What Miller says happened

According to the filing, Hamdan’s attack on the congressman was anything but a chance encounter. Evidence obtained from a forensic extraction of Hamdan’s cell phone — seized by law enforcement after his arrest — shows that Hamdan was fixated on Miller since at least October 2023, when Miller publicly commented in support of Israel following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack.

In messages recovered from his phone, Hamdan called Miller a “piece of s---” and a “POS” dozens of times in the months before attacking Miller, wrote that he “would lose it all to punch that POS,” said he “never wanted to fight someone so bad” in his life, and wrote that he “swear[s] I’d drive up there if I wasn’t working.”

The filing says Hamdan shared these messages — and more like them — in group chats with more than 40 friends, family members and associates.

The filing says that the night before the June 19, 2025, incident, Hamdan searched for and obtained an image of a Palestinian flag and a photo of Miller. On the morning of the attack, he obtained a map of Israel and surrounding countries. The filing says Hamdan then intentionally maneuvered his vehicle — a black Tesla owned by his employer — next to Miller’s truck on I-90 eastbound, forcing Miller to swerve and nearly crash into another vehicle. During the encounter, Hamdan recorded himself shouting antisemitic and homophobic slurs at Miller.

After breaking off the encounter, Hamdan sent a recorded audio message to his friends boasting: “SubhanAllah, couldn’t wait to cross paths with this [vulgarity] and today was the day! I had this mother effer shaking! This guy was so nervous. He pulled over and then I pulled over with him! This guy could barely look at me.”

In a text message sent to friends around the same time, Hamdan wrote: “Got into road rage this am haha… Intentional.”

The filing also alleges that during the encounter, Hamdan lowered the windows of the Tesla, shouted “Death to Israel” and “F-- the Jews” at Miller, threatened to kill Miller and his two-year-old daughter, and told Miller he knew where he lived.

Miller’s attorneys say these statements are what Miller reported to police — and what Hamdan has since claimed were fabricated.

In video obtained by police and released publicly, Hamdan can be seen driving next to Miller on I-90, showing the congressman a picture of a Palestinian flag and making statements critical of him. The video, shot by Hamdan on his own cell phone, does not capture any verbal threats — a fact that Hamdan’s attorneys highlighted in his February lawsuit.

At the time of Hamdan’s lawsuit, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O’Malley questioned why Hamdan would continue to keep the case in the public light.

“Congressman Max Miller was gracious in allowing a plea by Dr. Hamdan ... that would let him keep his medical license,” O’Malley said. “This lawsuit may backfire and cost Dr. Hamdan the gift he was just given.”

What the new filing says

Miller’s legal arguments go far beyond a defamation defense.

The filing makes counterclaims directly against Hamdan for assault, ethnic intimidation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil liability for criminal acts under Ohio law, and spoliation of evidence. It also claims that Hamdan’s antisemitism, homophobia, and threats of violence against others are incompatible with the professional standards required of licensed physicians.

The lawsuit also names Hamdan’s criminal defense attorney Issa Elkhatib, a Tesla data firm called TeslaMend and its owner Firas Almukdad, and a collision shop called Straightline Collision Center and its owner “EZ” Assad as third-party defendants, accusing them of civil conspiracy and spoliation of evidence.

The central conspiracy allegation concerns a report Almukdad produced in January 2026 purporting to show that the windows of the Tesla Hamdan was driving were closed during the entire incident — a key piece of evidence that Hamdan’s defense used to challenge Miller’s account. Miller’s attorneys had claimed Hamdan shouted threats through an open window; Hamdan’s side argued that was impossible.

According to Miller’s filing, when Rocky River Police Detective Michael Asbury later interviewed Almukdad under subpoena, the Tesla data specialist gave dramatically inconsistent accounts of how he produced the report. He admitted he had “assistance” in writing it from attorney Elkhatib, acknowledged that he excluded certain window data without explanation, and conceded that the excluded data was “unrecoverable” — meaning, the filing argues, anyone reviewing the report would simply have to take his word for what it showed.

The filing says the state of Ohio cited the TeslaMend report as the primary reason it agreed to reduce Hamdan’s felony charges to misdemeanors. After the case resolved, the legal papers say Almukdad’s company posted on Facebook: “We don’t just fix Teslas … we make sure the truth comes out. From body work to court work, Teslamend goes beyond the garage.”

Adding to the conspiracy allegation, Miller’s filing notes that Elkhatib — Hamdan’s criminal defense attorney and a named third-party defendant — posted a TikTok video on February 26 publicly stating that the Tesla window data was among the strongest evidence in the case. In the video, Elkhatib also said the plea agreement was secured specifically to position Hamdan to pursue the civil defamation lawsuit against Miller.

“He understood that by taking this plea, not only would we be clearing his name because it shows exactly why the state couldn’t move forward, but also at the same time, it allowed us to pursue civil damages for defamation,” Elkhatib said, according to the filing.

The filing also introduces new allegations about the scope of Hamdan’s fixation on Miller. It alleges that in November 2023, Hamdan confronted then-U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno — who was Miller’s father-in-law at the time — at an airport, recording himself telling Moreno: “Be careful, it’s a small world, Bernie. That’s all I’m saying. It’s a small world, and, ah just be careful, that’s all I’m saying.”

Hamdan’s friends, the filing says, immediately recognized the statement as a threat. Moreno later won a U.S. Senate seat in the November 2024 election.

The filing also alleges that when Miller won re-election to a second congressional term in November 2024, Hamdan sent messages to his associates saying he was “having a real emotional crisis” and wasn’t sure he could make it to work.

At Hamdan’s February sentencing, Judge Jeffrey Saffold of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas pressed Hamdan on his antisemitic statements. When Hamdan attempted to explain why he had identified Miller’s Jewish identity in his recorded comments during the encounter, the judge cut him off.

“You gleefully texted people that you had had this road rage incident and you’re not gonna believe who I confronted today,” the judge said, according to a transcript included in the filing. “It’s not acceptable.”