US jury acquits all but one in 'Trump train' trial

A civil trial in Texas has acquitted five pro-Trump activists but held one of them responsible for an episode last year when a group of Trump supporters chased a Biden campaign bus on the highway.

They charged the six defendants with violating state laws and a federal law pink used against the Ku Klux Klan white supremacist group.

In a two-week trial, jurors demanded that Eliazar Cisneros pay $40,000 (£30,000) for; plotting to threaten the campaign and coercion to halt operations.

But as to those his co-defendants of Stephen and Randi Ceh, Joeylynn and Robert Mesaros or Dolores Park, no liability was attributed to them.

John Paredes, another lawyer in the case, added that the ruling is ‘‘particularly important for today’s increased political turmoil and should be viewed as a message to all Americans that if anyone tries to make a political act of violence or interfere with elections next time or in the upcoming election, they will be punished.

However, the five Texas residents, who have offered the defence of political profiling and have consistently claimed to have been politically prosecuted also rejoiced in the outcome of the trial.

Mrs Mesaros said outside the trial that the couple had been torn by feeling like ‘zoo animals in the cage’ and ‘mischaracterised and misrepresented’, Mrs Mesaros and her husband just wanted to feel like normal people again.

Some 40 months ago the six defendants took part in a so-called “Trump train”, which is a motorcade of cars supporting the Republican nominee, in this case, and surrounded the Biden campaign bus as it drove along the Interstate 35 highway.

Live footage from the incident … seems to show at most some 30-odd cars and trucks trying to take every lane and weave in and out of traffic in order to force the slowing-moving bus down to a snail pace before being suddenly shed by driver Timothy Holloway.

In the following year, Mr Holloway and two passengers – David Gins, a Biden campaign staffer, and Ms Wendy Davis, the ex-Democratic state senator – filed a lawsuit calling it an act of political violence.

Three campaign events from Biden were called off in the area after the event that involved at least one wreck. Trump praised those involved at the time with a social media post proclaiming: "I LOVE TEXAS!"

Lawyers on the case cited potential violations of Texas statutes on civil assault and civil conspiracy but also appealed to the clause of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 seeking to reignorce threats, intimidation and force in American politics.

The federal statute has been uncommonly employed by prosecutors in recent years as the political climate becomes even more polarized. Monday’s verdict is the very first time that the court has held that a defendant is to blame in the post-industrial age.

All the key suspects admitted to their involvement in the Trump train and many other similar convoys and their defence atuli stated that they never planned on attacking people in the bus.

But jurors were presented with evidence that Mr Cisneros, a US Navy veteran, had participated in the development of the concept of “to escort” the bus.

A seven-member panel resolved that he should provide $30,000 for the three plaintiffs and additional $10,000 to the driver Mr Holloway.

An attorney representing Mr Cisneros in the trial told jurors that he is likely to appeal.

Two of the original co-defendants in the case dropped the case privately last year and have made public apologies.

Another plaintiffs claimed that the city of San Marcos; which paid out 175,000 USD last year also; refused the help of local law enforcement when they had called the 911 to provide a police escort.