It’s been four years since a campaign bus carrying Wendy Davis and others was nearly run off the road by a so-called “Trump Train” — a caravan of Republican activists waving giant flags showing support for Donald Trump.
Drivers of more than a dozen cars and trucks, honking and shouting, followed the bus on Interstate 35 between San Antonio and San Marcos, weaving in and out of traffic and causing a minor collision between a Biden campaign staffer following the bus and a Trump supporter.
Ultimately, the bus driver made an abrupt and speedy exit off the highway to lose the crowd.
Trump responded with enthusiastic approval: “I LOVE TEXAS!” he wrote in a tweet accompanied by a video of the incident. Democrats subsequently canceled three Biden campaign events in Central Texas due to safety concerns.
On Friday, the “Trump Train” heads to court in Austin. The trial stems from a 2021 lawsuit filed by Davis, a former state senator who became a Democratic sensation for her filibuster of an abortion restriction bill, along with the bus driver and a Biden campaign staffer. The trio sued multiple members of the caravan, alleging they violated state law and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 by engaging in a conspiracy to disrupt the campaign and intimidate those on the bus.
With Trump back on the ballot, Davis and the others want to send a message that political intimidation will not go unpunished.
Davis and the two other plaintiffs — former campaign staffer David Gins and bus driver Timothy Holloway — said the members of the Trump Train attempted to prevent them from showing support for Biden.
“The violence and intimidation that our plaintiffs endured on the highway for simply supporting the candidate of their choice is an affront to the democratic values we hold dear as Americans,” said John Paredes, an attorney for the plaintiffs who works with Protect Democracy, a Washington, D.C.-based group that combats authoritarian threats to American democracy. “Our plaintiffs are bravely standing up against this injustice to ensure that the trauma they endured catalyzes positive change rather than stains our democracy.”
[…]
Pitman, the Obama-appointed federal judge overseeing the case, has denied multiple requests by the defendants to dismiss the lawsuit. Most recently, he denied a request to dismiss the lawsuit by some of the defendants who argued there is not enough evidence for a jury to convict.
In that ruling, he said there was ample evidence for a jury to convict the Trump supporters and he sided with Davis and the other plaintiffs’ interpretation of the Klan Act, agreeing that it “establishes an independent substantive right to engage in support or advocacy in federal elections that extends beyond the act of voting.”
Last year, two of the Trump supporters in the case petitioned the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene and dismiss the case. While the court declined to do so, at least one judge suggested the plaintiffs’ interpretation of the Klan act was overly broad.
See here, here, and here for some background. The story has a lot of details about the people involved – and holy crap, some of these defendants are truly horrible – and the law being invoked, so read the whole thing. There was a separate lawsuit against the city of San Marcos and its police department, which was settled late last year. This case has the potential to hold some bad actors accountable for their despicable actions, and I am rooting for that outcome. I’ll be keeping an eye on this. Law and Crime has more.
Pingback: Trump Train trial gets underway | Off the Kuff