Most of the “Trump Train” supporters have officially beaten voter intimidation allegations in a civil trial after a federal jury decided that they weren’t financially liable for swarming a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign bus on Interstate 35 in 2020.
Well, all except one. A lone Trump supporter, however, has been ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars for violating the Ku Klux Klan Act after he and five other defendants boxed in the bus with their vehicles on the highway, the Austin American-Statesman reported.
The jury ordered Eliazar Cisneros to pay the bus driver, Tim Holloway, $10,000 in compensatory damages. Cisneros must also pay $30,000 in punitive damages after his car brushed up against another as the caravan of vehicles known as the “Trump Train” surrounded the Biden-Harris campaign bus, per the Associated Press.
Prosecutors said Cisneros came up with the plan to “escort” the bus and that two friends helped spread the word. Video showed that Cisneros hit a campaign volunteer’s car during the incident.
Plaintiffs on the bus, including former Texas Democratic state senator and 2014 gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, testified that the swarm of Trump supporters made them fear for their lives. “I feel like they were enjoying making us afraid,” Davis testified. “It’s traumatic for all of us to revisit that day.”
“We’re just ready to feel like normal people again,” said defendant Joeylynn Mesaros. “It’s been a thousand something days to have our day in court.”
The bus was headed from San Antonio to an event at Texas State University, but it was canceled after Davis and others on the bus called 9-1-1 asking for a police escort through San Marcos, to no avail.
