“We broke no laws, we did nothing wrong. They’re saying we have them emotional damage and they’re claiming to want financial compensation.”
In October 2020, just days before the general presidential election, the Biden bus rolled into Texas to make some campaign stops and encourage people to get out to vote for former VP Joe Biden. But Texas is Trump country, and trucks and cars emblazoned with Trump stickers, or waving Trump flags, joined the Biden bus on the highway.
The few people on the Biden bus, namely Wendy Davis and David Gins, saw the Trump Train as a threat, so much so that they called the police of every county they drove through asking them to get the pickup trucks out of their way. They claimed that the drivers were attempting to run them off the road. Video and audio reviewed by The Post Millennial paints the narrative surrounding the incident in a new light.
Davis, who was running for Congress at the time, staffer Gins, volunteer Eric Cervini and driver Timothy Holloway, brought a civil suit against five of those who were driving in the Trump Train that day claiming that the Trump Train drivers had "the express purpose of terrorizing and intimidating a group based on that group's political viewpoints, including their support for a different presidential campaign."
Joeylynn and Robert Mesaros drove a truck in the Trump Train through Texas in the fall of 2020 and as a result, they have been sued in civil court under the Ku Klux Klan Act. That Act was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War in 1871 and put the "administration of national elections under the control of the federal government and empowered federal judges and United States marshals to supervise local polling places." It further "empowered the president to use the armed forces to combat those who conspired to deny equal protection of the laws and to suspend habeas corpus, if necessary, to enforce the act."
In short, the suit alleges that the Trump Train attempted to obstruct free and fair elections through intimidation, injury, or denying the ability of the plaintiffs to engage in political speech. The Biden bus made it to their stop at the Austin AFL-CIO that day.
"There's no criminal charges, which is the craziest part," Joeylynn Mesaros told The Post Millennial. "We broke no laws, we did nothing wrong. They're saying we have them emotional damage and they're claiming to want financial compensation."
As for the Ku Klux Klan Act, Mesaros said "they're claiming that we violated the law because Trump supporters in a group format is synonymous with the Ku Klux Klan on horseback and with white supremacy and it suppresses minorities from voting by nature."
The Trump Train drivers flew American flags and Trump flags from their trucks. On the Biden bus and in the midst of the Trump train, the driver said he wasn't afraid at all and indicated that he would like to run the Trump Train drivers off the road.
Video viewed by The Post Millennial shows that Trump Train drivers did not appear to run the Biden bus off the road, and instead simply drove along the highway by the bus, driving slower than the speed limit. The video was obtained by Joeylynn and Robert Mesaros in discovery.
The plaintiffs claimed in the suit that "feared injury or for their lives" and that "All suffered lingering trauma in the days and months thereafter." Davis recorded the traffic out the bus window, some 45 minutes of it that was obtained by defendants Joeylnn and Robert Mesaros as part of the ongoing civil suit. That video, viewed by The Post Millennial, shows that Davis and Gins appeared annoyed at having to slow down due to the pace of the Trump-supporting traffic around them.
The trucks of the Trump Train drove northbound on I-35 through Texas along with the Biden bus. As they drove through Hayes County, Davis and the driver spoke about calling police to let them know. Gins made the call.
"We have about 75 cars that are surrounding us," Gins told an operator. "And trying to slow our bus down. We are a Biden campaign bus and these are Trump supporters with flags that have brought us to about—"
He was transferred to another person, and expressed his story again. "We are a campaign bus and we are surrounded by about 50 vehicles that have slowed us down to about 30 miles per hour."
"We're northbound," Davis chimed in.
"The Trump Train?" The operator with San Marcos police asked. They confirm that it is. "Yeah, we're aware of that," the operator said.
"Just that it's quite unsafe, um, for us, if there's any way that we could have some kind of assistance," Gins asked. The operator took their coordinates and put them on hold.
As trucks passed the bus, the driver said "they're getting reckless out here now," and slammed on the horn. Other drivers, not involved, sped through traffic, weaving in and out of traffic. More drivers were behind the bus.
The driver on the bus said "that's illegal," referring to the trucks driving on the roadway.
As the bus rode the tail of the truck in front of it and slammed on the horn, the driver said "now there's a charge," and instructed the others to "get that license plate number."
"Come on man, you gonna slow me down?" The driver said. The bus was going 15 miles per hour at that point.
San Marcos police asked again for their coordinates.
"We are going about 15 miles per hour right now because they are blocking us," Gins told police on the phone.
"Traffic is still slow?" the officer on the phone asked.
"Well, I mean they are purposely causing us to slow down," Gins said.
"No," Davis said, jumping in, "the traffic is not slow."
"It's illegal," the bus driver said.
"They are slowing us down," Davis said.
"This is harassment," the driver said.
After delivering more coordinates for their location, Gins muted the phone and said "just f*cking come and you'll see us." Davis laughed, and Gins worried aloud that Davis was recording while he was cursing in the background.
"I'm just videoing this case we need it," Davis said, "I'm not posting it live."
The bus continued honking at the Trump train drivers. Davis was transferred to the Kyle Police Department.
Davis et al would later sue the San Marcos police department for failing "to provide the bus a police escort,” saying that the officers "joked about the victims and their distress." The police department paid out $175,000 to the four persons on the bus.
"I'm on the Biden bus on 35 heading north, we're being trapped in by a bunch of Trump train trucks," she said, giving her coordinates. Kyle Police said officers would head out.
"They're impeding our progress, we can't even drive," Davis said as the bus continued on.
"They're going like 10 miles an hour. But now they are endangering other cars, the way they are driving," she said, though the trucks were only going 10 miles an hour, by her account.
"Come on, man, this is getting dangerous now, man, this is getting stupid," the driver said as he drove behind Trump Train trucks.
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Gins complained to police that they had been on the phone for 20 minutes and no officers had yet come to their aid. "I know you're trying to help," Davis said to the officer on the phone, "but I don't understand what's taking so long. I mean it's literally getting dangerous out here." The bus was driving well below the speed limit along with the trucks on the road.
Gins said into the phone "I appreciate it, we're just very scared."
"I ain't scared," the driver said. "[unintelligible] I'll run him right over, you know what I mean. I'll put that bumper right on his ass and push it. He'd get out the way."
Later, the driver straddled two lanes and spoke to Davis about it. They followed a white pick up with a Trump flag. "I'm gonna run him the f*ck right over, know what I mean?" The driver said.
Mesaros pulled clips of these moments and posted them to her Instagram. While it’s hard to hear over the sounds of the bus and conversation, the driver can be heard saying that he is not afraid and has his own vaguely violent designs on the drivers of the Trump train. The full, 43 minute video will not be made public until the next court date in June.
Police cars drove in front and behind the bus through Kyle, along with the Trump Train trucks.
At one point, Gins claimed that a staffer's car had been hit by a Trump train truck, but video shows that the bus moved to the right on the highway and was straddling the white lines. The staffer tried to follow, though there was no room in the lane and a black truck was already in the space the staffer and their white car tried to occupy. The contact between the staffer's white SUV and a black pickup truck with the Trump train appears to have been caused when the staffer's car veered into the right lane into which the pickup truck was driving. In video, the black truck could be seen pushing back to maintain a place on the road.
In social media clips shared by mainstream media outlets, only the push back from the truck is seen.
"This case involves elitist Democrats," attorney Jerad Navjar for the Mesaros defendants told The Post Millennial, "the Plaintiffs are campaign workers and a former elected official suing grassroots people for simply driving along the freeway with Trump flags to express their support for Trump’s re-election. The Biden folks were not intimidated, they were embarrassed by the highly visible and very effective expression of support for Trump, at a time when Biden couldn’t fill a coffee shop with campaign supporters.
"The only conspiracy here," Navjar continued, "is the Plaintiffs’ own conspiracy to abuse the court system to intimidate Trump supporters from exercising their constitutional rights to speak and associate. Driving along the freeway with a Trump flag is protected expression and cannot be made out as illegal intimidation under the Klan Act. We have a motion pending asking the court to dismiss the claim because it is obviously legally deficient."
"As a result of the events of October 30," the lawsuit reads, "Plaintiffs suffer ongoing psychological and emotional injury. They have suffered other tangible harms too; for example, Holloway, the bus driver, has found himself unable to drive a bus following his experience that day. Davis, Gins, and others were prevented from exercising their First Amendment rights, as they had to cancel all remaining campaign stops because the Trump Train’s intimidation posed a safety risk for not only Plaintiffs, but other candidates for political office, campaign staff, and supporters."
The FBI investigated the Trump Train as liberal media outlets ran with the narrative that the pickup trucks with Trump flags attempted to run the Biden bus off the road, something not corroborated with video evidence. Biden delivered remarks on the incident, wearing what appeared to be two face masks.
He repeated the allegations, saying that "a bunch of Trump trucks, pickup trucks with Trump flags, tried to run it off the road, were stopping it, were stopping in front of it. And the President saw it, and tweeted it back out and said 'I love Texas.'" Biden further complained about Trump flag emblazoned trucks that he had seen near where he'd been giving a speech in Philadelphia.
“It's really happening,” Joeylynn Mesaros said, “and if it’s happening to me it can happen to you next. It's happening to me, I'm a homeschool mother, and if it's happening to Trump, every other single other person in between is vulnerable.”
The next court date is in June and the Mesaros family is fundraising for legal fees. Najvar told The Post Millennial that the Fifth Circuit stated that "there appear to be significant legal problems with the plaintiff's theories." The case, however, is moving forward in the district court.