A Las Vegas man who was arrested in 2024 after he was discovered with a loaded handgun and suspicious documents at a checkpoint outside a Donald Trump rally in Coachella has completed the terms of his misdemeanor diversion program, prompting a Riverside County judge to dismiss the charge.
Vem Miller, 51, was charged with carrying a loaded firearm in public.
A day after the arrest, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said, “I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt.”
Miller initially pleaded not guilty, but the diversion program did not require a plea. Superior Court Judge James Hodgkins ordered him to complete an eight-hour gun safety class, take an online, four-hour life skills course and complete 40 hours of community service. His attorney, Angela Friedrichs, said the charge was dismissed on July 30 and that the records have been sealed.
“Sad that a misrepresentation ruined this man’s life,” Friedrichs said. “Glad our courts recognized the matter was worthy of a dismissal.”
The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office opposed the dismissal, which it also confirmed Tuesday, Aug. 11.
Miller said in a previous interview that he was a caucus captain in Nevada who supported Trump and that he received an invitation to the Coachella rally held on Oct. 12, 2024, from the Clark County Republican Party. As he arrived at a checkpoint a mile from the rally, he told deputies that he had a loaded handgun and a shotgun secured in his trunk.
His car was not registered, he had multiple passports and deputies did not recognize the pass Miller showed them. That raised suspicions that Miller was there to make an attempt on the presidential candidate’s life following an attempted shooting at a golf course in Florida in September 2024, and the wounding of Trump by a gunman in Butler, Pennsylvania, two months earlier.
Miller said he never threatened to kill the man he supported for president. Miller said he bought the firearms for protection and that, in addition to a U.S. passport, he has a Canadian passport listing his legal name before he changed it.
“It’s like a nuclear bomb being tossed in my life,” Miller said Tuesday. “And I just can’t believe that this is where we are that public officials could do this for their own gain and basically destroy lives for their own gain.”
In response Tuesday, Bianco said: “Vem Miller broke the law and was arrested. He would have and should have been rightfully convicted of breaking the law. Fortunately for him, in liberal California, diversion is an option for almost everything. Vem Miller will forever blame everyone else for his self-created problems with his nonsensical justifications and allegations.”
Miller has a defamation lawsuit pending against Bianco and an Aug. 27 hearing where Miller will continue to seek the body-worn camera footage from his encounter with deputies in Coachella.