CODVIP|CODVIP slots free spins|CODVIP superslots！

A federal civil jury on Monday mostly cleared a group of six defendants on trial for their roles in the so-called Trump Train that followed a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas in 2020, finding only that a San Antonio man had engaged in unlawful conspiracy.

The verdict by a seven-member jury followed a two-week civil trial in federal court in Austin in which the defendants had testified that their activities were protected political activity under the First Amendment.

The plaintiffs — who include Wendy Davis, a former Democratic state senator, along with a Biden campaign staff member and the bus driver — also testified, saying that the rolling road protest had been frightening and intimidating.

The encounter took place on Oct. 30, 2020, the last day of early voting that year in Texas, on a stretch of interstate highway between San Antonio and Austin. In dozens of vehicles, with campaign flags waving, supporters of President Donald J. Trump had waited for the Biden-Harris campaign bus and then surrounded it for much of the 80-mile trip.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs had argued that the “Trump Train” was not protected speech but rather a violation of the federal Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was passed in response to political and racial violence in the aftermath of the Civil War. The law bars groups of people from conspiring “to prevent, by force, intimidation or threat, any citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote from giving his support or advocacy in a legal manner” to a candidate.

For the plaintiffs’ lawyers, just getting to trial had been a key victory, because it meant that the 1871 law could be used to respond to modern political threats and violence. The judge in the case, Robert Pitman, found in a pretrial ruling that allegations by the plaintiffs could be found by a jury to fall “within the scope of the type of political violence that Congress intended to protect when it enacted the Klan Act back in 1871.”

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.millionairesslot

• in
• Clears
• millionairesslot
• All
• Jury