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

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/