Trump Train convoy pictured on Oct. 30, 2020 (exhibit from court documents).
A federal judge has now unsealed a lengthy opinion explaining why “Trump Train” participants are heading towards trial in a Ku Klux Klan Act lawsuit filed over the October 2020 surrounding of a Biden-Harris bus on I-35 in Texas, writing that a “reasonable jury” could find “force, intimidation, or threat[s]” were used to “interfere with Plaintiffs’ rights to support or advocate for their candidates for President and Vice President” and that the claim can survive without a “showing of racial or class-based animus.”
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman last week denied summary judgment motions that were filed by defendants Eliazar Cisneros, Joeylynn Mesaros, Robert Mesaros, and Dolores Park, siding with KKK Act, civil conspiracy, and civil assault plaintiffs Wendy Davis — a Democratic former member of the Texas Senate — former Biden-Harris campaign staffer David Gins, and bus driver Tim Holloway, and setting the stage for a September trial, nearly four years after the incident that gave rise to the case.
Pitman, a Barack Obama appointee, initially issued the ruling under seal, but the public filing now shows his view is that the KKK Act of 1871 “establishes an independent substantive right to engage in support or advocacy in federal elections that extends beyond the act of voting” itself.
“Although the methods of political intimidation may change over time and require adapting the Klan Act to new contexts, the conduct alleged here requires no such adaption; the Defendants’ alleged conduct is similar to a type of political violence that the Klan engaged in at the time of the Act’s enactment,” Pitman wrote in one part of the ruling, providing an example from 1868 of where a wagon full of 36 Republican “young ladies” on the way to a political rally crashed due to an act of “Ku-Klux treachery”:
[T]he Reconstruction era Congress was greatly concerned about the political violence being enacted by the Klan. One such type of political violence was physical intimidation of persons traveling for political rallies. Such conduct was not foreign to the public in 1871. For example, an article published in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel in 1868 decried the “Ku-Klux treachery” of a “dastardly attempt to murder . . . thirty-six young ladies who represented the states at the Republican rally at Bonaparte [Iowa]” by causing the “large wagon in which they were” to crash. A Democratic Attempt to Kill Thirty-Six Republican Girls, Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Oct. 22, 1868, at 2; see also (Ex. 1, Dkt. 386). Courts at the time recognized that political intimidation occurring on public roads fell under the breadth of the Support or Advocacy Clause. See United States v. Butler, 25 F. Cas. 213, 220 (C.C.D.S.C. 1877) (No. 14,700) (describing testimony, noting that conspirators forced men traveling on the road to “to get down on their knees, and made to swear that they would vote the Democratic ticket”).
While the Biden-Harris bus did not crash, plaintiffs alleged that they feared that was a possibility — and video from that day showed that there was a collision between a car directly behind the bus driven by a Biden-Harris staffer and the truck driven by Cisneros.
The judge wrote that Cisneros “later described” that collision as “‘me slamming that f****r’ and ‘welcom[ing] him properly to Texas.””
More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Trump Train’ convoy boyfriend and girlfriend sued under KKK Act for tailing Biden-Harris campaign bus apologize after settlement
While Cisneros argued that what the Biden-Harris associated plaintiffs called an “ambush” and “assault,” among “other choice words,” was actually a “Trump Train” exercise of First Amendment rights “in a demonstration of support for their favorite candidate for President of the United States,” Donald Trump, the judge wrote that the First Amendment is not a shield for “allegedly threatening Plaintiffs with reckless driving” just like the First Amendment “does not protect a driver waving a political flag from running a red light” or somehow transform that violation into “expressive conduct.”
“A jury could reasonably find that Defendants unlawfully conspired and drove in a dangerous manner such that they threatened or assaulted Plaintiffs,” Pitman wrote. “If a jury accepts these allegations, Defendants’ First Amendment defense must fail because assaulting, intimidating, or imminently threatening others with force is not protected expression. And to the extent that Defendants’ conduct contained any pure speech, such speech would also be excluded from First Amendment protection because it was incidental to tortious behavior or constituted a true threat.”
The judge also said Cisneros allegedly boasted that he was “[s]mart enough to get the entire Biden-Harris campaign cancelled in Texas,” called the driver of the staffer vehicle “Antifa, I’m more than sure,” that he testified at a deposition he “‘pushed [the staffer] back’ and agreed that he ‘hit him,’” and that there was evidence he once texted co-defendant Joeylynn Mesaros asking for a custom-made “don’t make me Rittenhouse your a–” T-shirt, evidently referring to Kyle Rittenhouse.
From the ruling, regarding the Cisneros deposition:
And even during his deposition, Cisneros reflected on the success of his plan: “So was it a success that I kind of saved Texas from people like that, that would quit in the smallest face of adversity? I would— I would want somebody a lot stronger than that. Somebody who won’t quit.”
At least as far as Cisneros is concerned, Pitman continued, his prior conduct from the month just before the I-35 incident, where he apparently drove through a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters, provides key context for his alleged “intent in colliding with the staffer’s car[.]”
“Cisneros testified at his deposition that he drove into that crowd of protestors ‘just to make a statement,’ but when asked whether he knew if he put anybody in fear of being hit by his truck, he testified, ‘I hope so. I hope I instilled a little bit of fear, yeah,’” the ruling said, also saying Cisneros years later traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 and “coordinated with others to bring collapsible batons and bear mace to allegedly protect others from Antifa and Black Lives Matter.”
After the Black Lives Matter incident from September 2020, Cisneros reportedly said “I didn’t want to hurt anybody” and “You know, get off the street, get on the sidewalk and protest whatever you are protesting on the sidewalk. Stay safe.”
Law&Crime sought comment from Cisneros attorney Francisco Canseco and will update this story if we receive one.
While the plaintiffs have claimed that there is proof that defendants “prepared and organized the October 30 ‘Trump Train’” for the purpose of intimidating the Biden-Harris out of Texas, where campaign events were scheduled, defendant Park has acknowledged that the night before the incident she “added designs to a flyer for an event at 12:30pm stating ‘BRING FLAGS & WEAR YOUR TRUMP GEAR’ and posted the digital flyer to Facebook” but otherwise did not know her co-defendants and did not box in the bus, so she maintained she was not involved in a conspiracy.
The judge said a jury can resolve “disputes of material fact as to whether Park entered into a conspiracy and whether that conspiracy had an unlawful intent.”
Read the order here.
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