Trial begins over Texas ‘Trump Train’ highway confrontation
On a busy Texas highway days before the 2020 election, former Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis used her phone to record the scene unfolding around the Biden-Harris campaign bus: a convoy of Donald Trump supporters weaving close while her fellow passengers called 911 asking for help.
In a federal court in Austin on Monday, a jury watched the video by Davis on the first day of a civil trial that seeks to hold some of those Trump supporters responsible for what Davis and others on the bus say was a frightening threat of political violence.
“It was a day that was very different from anything I experienced campaigning,” Davis said.
In opening statements, a lawyer for Davis and other plaintiffs argued that six drivers in a so-called Trump Train participated in an orchestrated attack on a Texas interstate aimed at intimidating people on the bus and making the campaign cancel its remaining events in the state.
“This Trump Train was different because it had a target,” attorney Samuel Hall said. “We’re here because of actions that put people’s lives in danger.”
The civil jury trial comes as Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris race into the final two months of their head-to-head fight for the White House in November.
Democrats on the bus said they feared for their lives as Trump supporters in dozens of trucks and cars nearly caused collisions, harassing their convoy for more than 90 minutes, hitting a Biden-Harris campaign staffer’s car and forcing the bus driver to repeatedly swerve for safety.
“For at least 90 minutes, defendants terrorized and menaced the driver and passengers,” the lawsuit alleges. “They played a madcap game of highway ‘chicken’ coming within three to four inches of the bus. They tried to run the bus off the road.”
The highway confrontation prompted an FBI investigation, which led then-President Trump to declare that in his opinion, “these patriots did nothing wrong.”
Caravans of Trump-supporting motorists in ‘Trump trains’ caused chaos in multiple states over the weekend.
The defense argued that the drivers did not conspire against the Biden-Harris campaign bus that day but joined the caravan of vehicles outfitted with Trump banners as if it were a pep rally. The lawyers claimed that the bus had several opportunities to exit the highway on its way from San Antonio to Austin.
“It was a rah-rah group that sought to support and advocate for a candidate of their choice in a very loud way,” said Francisco Canseco, an attorney for three of the defendants.
Davis, a former Texas state senator and Democratic nominee for governor, rose to prominence in 2013 with her 13-hour filibuster of an antiabortion bill in the state Capitol. She is joined in the lawsuit by a campaign volunteer, a staffer and the bus driver.
“We felt overwhelmed by what was going on and we didn’t have any support,” Davis testified.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, accuses the six named defendants of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act, an 1871 federal law passed to stop political violence and intimidation tactics.
The same law was used in part to indict Trump on federal election interference charges over attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Enacted by Congress during the Reconstruction era, the law was created to protect Black men’s right to vote by prohibiting political violence.
Videos of the confrontation on Oct. 30, 2020, that were shared on social media, including some recorded by the Trump supporters, show a group of cars and pickup trucks — many adorned with large Trump flags — riding alongside the campaign bus. The Trump supporters at times boxed in the bus, slowed it down, kept it from exiting the highway and repeatedly forced the bus driver to make evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision, the lawsuit says.
On the two previous days, Biden-Harris supporters were subjected to death threats, with some Trump supporters displaying weapons, according to the lawsuit. These threats in combination with the highway confrontation led Democrats to cancel an event later in the day.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, alleges the defendants were members of local groups near San Antonio that coordinated the confrontation.
Donald Trump is falsely claiming that an image of thousands of people who were waiting at Detroit’s airport for a Kamala Harris rally was fabricated.
Canseco said his clients acted lawfully and did not infringe on the free speech rights of those on the bus.
“It’s more of a constitutional issue,” the attorney said. “It’s more of who has the greater right to speak behind their candidate.”
Judge Robert Pitman denied the defendants’ pretrial motion for a summary judgment in their favor, ruling last month that the KKK Act prohibits the physical intimidation of people traveling to political rallies, even when racial bias isn’t a factor.
Although one of the defendants, Eliazar Cisneros, argued his group had a 1st Amendment right to demonstrate support for their candidate, the judge wrote that “assaulting, intimidating, or imminently threatening others with force is not protected expression.”
“Just as the First Amendment does not protect a driver waving a political flag from running a red light, it does not protect Defendants from allegedly threatening Plaintiffs with reckless driving,” Pitman wrote.
A prior lawsuit filed over the interstate highway incident alleged the San Marcos Police Department violated the Ku Klux Klan Act by failing to send a police escort after multiple 911 calls were made and a bus rider said his life was threatened.
It accused officers of privately laughing and joking about the emergency calls. San Marcos settled the lawsuit in 2023 for $175,000 and agreed to a requirement that law enforcement get training on responding to political violence.
Lathan writes for the Associated Press.
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