'Videos don't lie': Defense opens Bundy Ranch trial with clips of scuffles with agents

[TexasTowelie]

LAS VEGAS — A federal jury got a first look Tuesday at videos of confrontations involving armed federal agents and Bundy family members that rancher Cliven Bundy's lawyer said provided a catalyst for an April 2014 gunpoint standoff and a trial now underway in Las Vegas.

One clip that attorney Bret Whipple said spread widely on the Internet showed Bundy's sister, Margaret Huston, thrown to the ground by a federal agent after she approached the driver's side of a vehicle involved in a U.S. Bureau of Land Management cattle round-up near the Bundy ranch.

Whipple derided an interpretation that Acting U.S. Attorney Steven Myhre offered to the jury — that the 57-year-old Huston had to be pulled away from the front of the truck and knocked down for her own safety.

Myhre cast the 71-year-old Cliven Bundy as the leader of a conspiracy with sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy and co-defendant Ryan Payne to enlist armed militia members to force the federal agents "at the end of a gun" to abandon efforts to collect his cattle from public rangeland.

Read more: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investigations/2017/11/14/cliven-bundy-ranch-standoff-trial-test-american-land-policies-las-vegas/862322001/

[DetlefK]

1. Videos don't lie? Does the video have audio? Does the video show what happened before the altercatio

[TexasTowelie]

2. I suspect that the defense has edited the videos sufficiently

such that the truth is masked. Whether it rises to the level of creating reasonable doubt will be left to the jury; however, I also think that a jury in a different location may come to a different decision than one in Las Vegas.