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An updated federal lawsuit alleges that police officials in San Marcos, Texas, refused to provide an escort for a Joe Biden campaign bus when supporters of then-President Donald Trump surrounded it on an interstate in October 2020.
The Texas Tribune reports that the suit alleges that law enforcement officers in San Marcos “privately laughed” and “joked about the victims and their distress” in the audio recordings.
Pictures and videos posted on social media showed a long line of vehicles with pro-Trump signage trailing, and at times surrounding, the Biden-Harris bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin.
On Oct. 30, 2020, the Biden-Harris campaign was scheduled to make a stop in San Marcos for an event at Texas State University. The bus traveled from San Antonio up I-35, and was surrounded and followed by supporters of former President Donald Trump, who formed a self-labeled “Trump Train,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit claims that the plaintiffs were “targets of a conspiracy to ambush the Biden-Harris Campaign bus on I-35.”
“For at least 90 minutes, including during the entirety of the stretch of I-35 inside the San Marcos city lines, the Trump Train pursued and terrorized the plaintiffs,” the lawsuit says. “Plaintiffs tried to get help. They repeatedly called 911. They requested police escorts. San Marcos refused to help.”
The lawsuit claims the defendants violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 by failing to “take reasonable steps to protect Plaintiffs from an unlawful civil rights conspiracy and/or refused to send a police escort to aid the bus, despite being asked to provide one.”
The planned event at Texas State was a part of the several stops scheduled by the Biden campaign in the state during the final days of the 2020 presidential election.
