Judge allows lawsuit over 2020 ‘Trump Train’ incident to move forward

A federal judge on Wednesday declined to throw out a civil lawsuit against a group of Trump supporters who surrounded a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway in 2020. 

U.S. District Judge Robert Pittman rejected the “Trump Train” defendants’ motion to dismiss the case filed by a group of Biden campaign staffers and supporters, including former Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D). 

Pittman, an Obama appointee, said in a 14-page decision that the suit would move forward over the defendants’ various legal and procedural objections to the complaint. 

Davis and five others who were on the Biden bus or driving alongside filed the lawsuit last year, accusing the Trump-supporting drivers who aggressively surrounded them on the highway of recklessly endangering their lives and trying to intimidate them.  

The lawsuit accused the defendants of violating the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan Act, which bars efforts to harm those engaged in political advocacy. 

Tim Holloway, one of the plaintiffs and the driver of the bus during the incident, applauded Pittman’s ruling Wednesday.

“Today the court reaffirmed that political violence has no place in our democracy,” Holloway said in a statement. “And though the threats and intimidation we experienced are haunting, at least there is hope that our harassers will be held accountable.”