AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A jury in Texas began to deliberate Friday whether the so-called “Trump Train” that surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus days before the 2020 election in a heated highway encounter amounted to political intimidation.
"This case is not about politics,” Robert Meyer, an attorney representing those aboard the bus, told the jury. “It’s about safety.”
The civil trial has spanned two weeks in a federal courthouse in Austin has included testimony from former Texas Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis, who ran for governor in 2014, and is one of three people who was on board the bus and brought the lawsuit against six supporters of former President Donald Trump.
No criminal charges have been filed against the Trump supporters, who have argued that their actions during the convoy on Oct. 30, 2020, were protected speech.
Video that Davis recorded from the bus shows pickup trucks with large Trump flags slowing down to box in the bus as it tried to move away from the group of Trump supporters. One of the defendants hit a campaign volunteer’s car while the trucks occupied all lanes of traffic, forcing the bus and everyone around it to a 15 mph crawl.
During closing arguments Friday, Meyer argued that the defendants’ conversations leading up to the convoy about “Operation Block the Bus,” dissemination of flyers and aggressive driving met the criteria for political intimidation. Jurors also listened to several 911 calls from bystanders who were fearful that the convoy would cause a collision.
“This wasn’t some kind of peaceful protest,” Meyer said. “The bus swarmed on all sides.”
Attorneys for the defendants argued they did not intend to hurt anyone or scheme a plan for Democrats to cancel their remaining campaign events in Texas.
“There was no civil assault because there was no intent to hurt anybody,” attorney Francisco Canseco said. Canseco represents Eliazar Cisneros who is accused of hitting a volunteer's car that was following the bus.
The jury will have to decide whether the defendants made an informal agreement to intimidate, harass or injure the Democrats on the bus in an effort to suppress their political support of President Joe Biden.
On Friday, comments outside the courtroom got heated between gallery members and one woman was escorted out.
Those on the bus — including Davis, a campaign staffer and the driver — repeatedly called 911 asking for help and a police escort through San Marcos, but when no law enforcement arrived, the campaign canceled the event and pushed forward to Austin.
The trial began with plaintiffs' attorneys saying that organizers targeted the bus in a calculated attack to intimidate the Democrats, arguing that it violated the “Ku Klux Klan Act,” an 1871 federal law that bans political violence and intimidation.
The City of San Marcos settled a separate lawsuit filed by the same three Democrats against the police, agreeing to pay $175,000 and mandate political violence training for law enforcement.
Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Closing arguments begin in civil trial over 'Trump Train' encounter with Biden-Harris bus in Texas
FILE - Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., ride on a bus in Phoenix, Oct. 8, 2020, on a small business bus tour. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
Closing arguments begin in civil trial over 'Trump Train' encounter with Biden-Harris bus in Texas
BEIRUT (AP) — Israel launched a rare airstrike that killed a senior Hezbollah military official in a densely populated southern Beirut neighborhood on Friday. It was the deadliest such strike on Lebanon’s capital in decades, with Lebanese authorities reporting at least 14 people killed and dozens more wounded in the attack.
The Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the strike on Beirut's southern Dahiya district killed Ibrahim Akil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, as well as 10 other Hezbollah operatives.
“We will continue pursuing our enemies in order to defend our citizens, even in Dahiya, in Beirut,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, describing the Israeli strike that targeted Akil as part of “a new phase of war.”
Several hours later, Hezbollah confirmed Akil's death. In a statement, the Lebanese militant group described Akil as “a great jihadist leader” and said he had “joined the procession of his brothers, the great martyr leaders, after a blessed life full of jihad, work, wounds, sacrifices, dangers, challenges, achievements, and victories.”
Akil served on Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council. He was sanctioned by the United States for his alleged involvement in the 1983 bombing that killed more than 300 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks.
Last year, the U.S. State Department posted a $7 million reward for information leading to his identification, location, arrest or conviction, citing his role in the embassy bombing and in the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s.
The strike came as a new cycle of escalation between the enemies raised fears of a full-out war erupting in the Middle East.
Hours before the Israeli strike, Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with 140 rockets as the region awaited the revenge promised by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah over this week’s mass explosions of pagers belonging to members of the Shiite militant group.
The Israeli military did not provide the identities of the other Hezbollah commanders allegedly killed in its strike on the crowded neighborhood just kilometers from downtown Beirut.
Lebanon's Health Ministry said at least 14 people were killed and 66 others were wounded in the attack, which leveled the apartment building where the Israeli army claimed Akil had been meeting with other militants in the basement. Nine of the wounded were in serious condition, the ministry added.
Local networks in Lebanon broadcast footage showing first responders sifting through the rubble of a collapsed high-rise in the Jamous area in the heart of Dahiya, where Hezbollah conducts many of its political and security operations.
Friday's airstrike — the deadliest such attack on a neighborhood of Beirut since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody, monthlong war in 2006 — hit during rush hour, as people were leaving work and children heading home from school.
At Beirut's St. Therese Hospital near the scene of the airstrike, crowds flocked to donate blood for those wounded in the attack.
“We are all together in this situation, so it’s my obligation,” said Hussein Harake, who lined up to donate blood.
From Israel, Gallant said he briefed senior military officials on the strike and vowed Israel would press on against Hezbollah "until we achieve our goal, ensuring the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes.”
The strike came after Hezbollah launched one of its most intense bombardments of northern Israel in nearly a year of fighting, largely targeting Israeli military sites. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted most of the Katyusha rockets. The few that got through sparked small fires but caused little damage and no Israeli casualties.
Hezbollah described its latest wave of rocket salvos as a response to past Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon — not as revenge for the mass explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed at least 37 people - including two children - and wounded 2,900 others in attacks widely attributed to Israel.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in this week's sophisticated attacks, which signaled a major escalation in the past 11 months of simmering conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire regularly since Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel ignited the Israeli military’s devastating offensive in Gaza. But previous cross-border attacks have largely struck areas in northern Israel that had been evacuated and less-populated parts of southern Lebanon.
The last time Israel hit Beirut was in a July airstrike that killed senior Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur.
“The attack in Lebanon is to protect Israel,” Hagari said at a news conference following Friday's strike, describing both Shukr and Akil as the two military officials closest to Hezbollah leader Nasrallah.
Hagari also accused Akil of plotting a series of attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians dating back decades, including a never-realized plan to invade northern Israel in a similar way to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.
After Friday's Israeli airstrike, Hezbollah announced attacks on northern Israel, two of which it said targeted an intelligence base from where it claimed Israel directed assassinations.
Israel remains on edge, with Nasrallah vowing Thursday to keep up strikes on Israel despite the humiliating “blow” he said Hezbollah suffered in the sabotage of its communication devices.
“We are in a tense period,” Hagari told reporters Friday. “We are prepared on high alert both offensively and defensively.”
In recent days, Israel has sent a powerful fighting force to the northern border, designated as an official war goal the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel and ordered citizens near Israel's border with Lebanon to stay close to bomb shelters. Hezbollah has maintained that it will only halt its fire when there is a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hamas, which continues to fight Israel in Gaza, condemned the Israeli strike targeting Akil as a “new crime” and “violation of Lebanese sovereignty.”
Even as the world's attention turns to the surge in Israel-Hezbollah tensions, Palestinian casualties in the besieged Gaza Strip continued to mount.
Palestinian health authorities early Friday reported that 15 people, including children, were killed in Israeli strikes that targeted a family home and a group of people on the street in Gaza City. Israel's campaign in Gaza has already killed at least 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza-based Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between fighters and civilians.
In response to a request for comment on the latest Gaza strikes, the Israeli military insisted on Friday that it took “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm” and accused Hamas of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas.
Israel's bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip — launched in response to Hamas killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostage in southern Israel on Oct. 7 — has wreaked vast destruction and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
Residents look on as rescuers arrive at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Residents look on as rescuers arrive at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Rescuers work at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Rescuers work at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Members of Hezbollah stand on a fire truck as rescuers work at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Rescuers work at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Rescuers work at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
People stand on top of a damaged car at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather near a damaged building at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A woman checks the scene of a missile strike from her damaged house in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Rescuers carry a body at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Ambulances arrive at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
People stand on top of a damaged car at the scene of a missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People and rescuers gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather near a damaged building at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People gather at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket fired from Lebanon, in northern Israel, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
