Man arrested outside California rally a 'committed Trump supporter,' Clark County GOP chair says

LAS VEGAS — Clark County Republican Party Chairman Jesse Law confirmed that Vem Miller — arrested Saturday after allegedly trying to pass a checkpoint with loaded firearms outside of a California rally for former President Donald Trump — is a longtime Trump supporter.

Law said Miller, a longtime volunteer, asked him for entry to the Trump event in Coachella, California, and Law got him expedited entry.

“It’s what we do for volunteers that we know,” said Law, who has served as county party chair since 2021 and is a former Trump White House employee.

Law said he knows Miller personally, and he described him as a Trump supporter and grassroots activist. Miller is a Trump caucus captain, and has attended all the conventions, including the RNC in July, Law said.

“I just know him to be a sincere and committed Trump supporter,” Law said.

The former 2022 Republican Assembly candidate was booked at the John J. Benoit Detention Center for possession of a loaded firearm and possession of a high-capacity magazine, both misdemeanors, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office. Miller was released from custody on $5,000 bail the same day.

Miller told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the notion raised by the Riverside County sheriff that deputies who arrested him may have thwarted an attempt to assassinate Trump was ridiculous and he said is a “great admirer” of the former president.

Former Clark County District Attorney David Roger told the Review-Journal that if federal agencies believed Miller had been planning an assassination attempt, they likely would have held him in custody, or would at least be putting together a case very quickly.

The next step, he said, would be to look into signs through Miller’s social media accounts, emails and other information that would lead them to believe he was planning an assassination attempt.

Miller’s social media is coated in pro-Trump and anti-Kamala Harris posts, some of which make vulgar, sexual comments about the vice president. Two weeks ago, he posted photos with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who endorsed Trump after dropping out of the 2024 election as an independent candidate.

Roger and former federal prosecutor Kathleen Bliss both questioned the sheriff’s accusations of a potential assassination, with Bliss calling them “gratuitous.”

“Right now, just having a gun in an area where the former president is located doesn’t amount to an assassination attempt,” Roger said.

Bliss said it was still too early to understand the case fully, but noted that if she were the prosecutor on the case, she would be asking questions about where the guns were, and what was illegal about them.

“You’ve got two competing dangers,” Bliss said. “One is you don’t want anyone hurt, for darn sure. But then No. 2, because there is a lot of hypervigilance about things, you don’t want to rush to doing something that would violate someone’s constitutional rights.”