A disturbing video from a 2020 domestic violence arrest of a Democratic official facing trial for allegedly murdering a journalist who was investigating him went viral this weekend after surfacing on social media.
In the police bodycam video, Robert Telles — then the public administrator of Clark County, Nevada — urged cops not to arrest him, saying it would hurt his chances for re-election.
“I’m a public official,” Telles said in the March 2020 police video reviewed by KVVU-TV in Las Vegas.
“I’m not trying to be like an a****** or be a jerk. I would like to be re-elected.”
At the time, police were responding to a 911 call from Telles’ home in which his wife accused him of threatening her.
“You didn’t grab her throat and then chase her around the Bellagio?” the officer asked, according to KVVU.
“Oh, that f***** b*******! She is scared of me after 10 years of marriage when I barely touched her,” Telles said.
In the squad car, Telles suggested his wife was overreacting and blamed her for his arrest.
Did Telles kill a journalist who sought to expose corruption in his county office?
“If my wife, who I have been married to for nearly 10 years, is going to be acting like I’m going to f****** kill her, oh my god. Dude, we have a freaking, we have a vacation that was scheduled for June, for 10 f****** days, bro,” Telles said.
The cop asked Telles if his drunkenness escalated the fight with his wife.
“It may have something to do with how drunk you are,” the officer said, according to KVVU. “I am going to go out on a limb and say that may have been a factor.”
Instead of exercising his right to remain silent, Telles inadvertently incriminated himself by admitting he drinks a lot and often.
“Honestly, I’ve been drunker,” he bragged, as reported by Fox News. “I’ve been drunker than this, chief.”
The domestic-violence case was closed on March 30, 2020, and Telles was ordered to complete a class and stay out of trouble.
Three months later, he lost his bid for re-election.
Telles’ loss wasn’t surprising, since employees from his department had filed complaints accusing him of bullying and creating a hostile work environment, according to a May 2020 report filed by investigative journalist Jeff German of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
These are the corruption allegations German was researching when he was stabbed to death outside his home on Sept. 3.
On Sept. 12, Telles was charged with murder after the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said they found his DNA on the victim’s body, as well as other incriminating evidence, according to Fox News.
“Investigators believed [German] had been attacked the day before and found video of a suspect wearing an orange shirt and wide straw hat,” KSNV-TV in Las Vegas reported.
“Police searched Telles’s home on Wednesday and found shoes and a straw hat matching the suspect’s, with apparent blood found on the shoes. Telles’s DNA also was found on German’s body during an autopsy.”
Obviously, everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but the evidence against Telles seems pretty damning.
And the revelation of his 2020 domestic-violence incident and his angry, arrogant demeanor during the arrest will undoubtedly hurt him at his murder trial.
