There is a well-established body of literature in political sociology on what happens when a powerful person’s testimony meets institutional credulity. The literature, it must be said, has not been read by the Rocky River Police Department, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the U.S. Capitol Police, the FBI, Judge Joseph T. Burke, or Speaker Mike Johnson.
On the morning of June 19, 2025, Dr. Feras Hamdan, a 36-year-old family physician, was commuting along Interstate 90 near Rocky River, Ohio, when he spotted a black Dodge Ram that resembled a colleague’s truck. He pulled alongside it. The face in the window belonged not to a colleague but to Representative Max Miller, the Ohio Republican who had distinguished himself in October 2023 by telling Fox News that Palestine was “about to probably be eviscerated” because “we’re gonna turn that into a parking lot.” Hamdan, a Palestinian American whose family migrated to Cleveland from Beit Hanina after the 1967 annexation, searched his phone for an image of a Palestinian flag, held it up to his passenger-side window for a few seconds, and honked his horn. The entire interaction lasted 24 seconds.
usembassykyiv (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsWhat followed was a five-minute 911 call in which Miller, by Hamdan’s attorneys’ count, fabricated no fewer than ten separate claims. The doctor had cut him off. The doctor had flipped him off. The doctor had threatened to kill him and his daughter. The doctor had promised to slit their throats. The doctor had called him a “dirty Jew.” The doctor had said he knew where Miller lived. The doctor had thrown a Palestinian flag from his window. The doctor had vowed to “turn my house into a parking lot,” a detail so perfectly calibrated to invoke Miller’s own genocidal Fox News remark that one almost admires the theatrical instinct.
None of it happened. The two vehicles were traveling at highway speeds. Hamdan’s attorneys retained an aerospace engineer equipped with three sound-level meters to demonstrate what any driver who has ever attempted a conversation at 65 miles per hour already knows: you cannot hear a person in the adjacent lane. Miller, who helpfully noted on the call that he was carrying a weapon but was “glad I didn’t use it,” then stopped his vehicle in the middle of traffic. The honking horns of stranded motorists became, in his narration to the dispatcher, further evidence of the doctor’s road rage.
The institutional response was swift, disproportionate, and entirely predictable. More than a dozen police cars filled the parking lot of the urgent care clinic where Hamdan worked. Four agencies investigated. Police went to the home of Hamdan’s boss, Dr. Abdallah Ali, whose name was on the Tesla’s registration, and brought him to the station, where Miller identified Hamdan from a lineup despite the minor inconvenience that Ali has a beard and Hamdan did not. Hamdan was charged with aggravated menacing, a first-degree misdemeanor, plus felony ethnic intimidation and felony tampering with evidence, the last charge stemming from his deletion of the embarrassing video he had sent to friends.
Aykhan Zayedzadeh (CC BY 4.0) via Wikimedia CommonsJudge Burke set bail at $500,000, an amount typically reserved for violent felonies. The prosecutor had suggested $25,000. “You could just hear the air sucked out of the room,” Hamdan’s attorney later said. The doctor spent Juneteenth weekend in county jail. His family scrambled to raise $50,000 cash for bond. He lost his job at HealthExpress Urgent Care. He faces hundreds of thousands in legal fees. All for a 24-second act of protest that involved no words, no threats, and no contact.
Miller, meanwhile, is now facing a spousal abuse scandal of his own, and has a long history of making accusations that crumble under scrutiny. But the machinery of the state does not require scrutiny when a member of Congress makes a phone call. It requires only belief. And belief, in this case, was enough to destroy a man’s career, his finances, and his freedom for a weekend—all because he held up a flag.