(EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was first published August 9, 2024 at 6:56 PM EDT, but is being republished, with additional commentary, in light of additional media reports on the issue.)
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Audio from the Las Vegas Metro Police Department’s protective detail for President Joe Biden on July 17 was released Friday afternoon by Oversight Project, which obtained the recordings through a Freedom of Information Act request. Those recordings confirm RedState’s reporting that Biden was first headed to University Medical Center, a trauma center, after he suddenly canceled a speaking engagement reportedly due to illness, then suddenly diverted directly to Harry Reid International Airport.
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Biden arrived in Las Vegas on July 16 and gave a speech to the NAACP that went well, under Joe Biden standards. He did arrive an hour late, though.
The next day, Biden was scheduled to leave the Mandalay Bay to do a meet-and-greet at Lindo Michoacan, a legendary Mexican restaurant in Las Vegas, before heading back to the Strip to the MGM Grand to deliver remarks to the Unidos conference. He was very late to that as well, the recordings reflect.
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Before leaving Lindo Michoacan, though, Biden gave an interview to a Univision reporter. After that interview is when things went awry. An officer announces on the radio to the LVMPD portion of the protective detail that “they’re on a hold for something regarding the President” then that “POTUS is Code 421,” which is a sick or injured person, and that he was being seen. The motorcade then began securing a route to University Medical Center, a Level 1 trauma center, as a voice comes over the audio saying, “Channel, if you didn’t hear that, 678 says that if you’re not on a priority call, to clear and be en route to a 461 at UMC; meet at the Valley ER parking lot.”
At some point after that, when the route to UMC was nearly secured, plans suddenly changed and the LVMPD officers were asked to secure the route from Lindo Michoacan to the tarmac at Harry Reid International Airport, where Air Force One was waiting.
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“Coordinating shutting down intersections with lights from Desert Inn all the way to Russell.
“Units on the Event Channel are going to be moving with the package.”
The three recordings span a time frame of a few hours and are not timestamped, so it’s difficult to get exact time frames from them. Two of the clips, each about four minutes long, are clips from the general channel where LVMPD coordinated additional units (meaning, units that were not involved in the protective detail) used to shut down traffic and secure the routes after the sudden change of plans. The third, the event channel for the officers involved in the protective detail, is about 43 minutes long. We are sharing the audio in full here so readers can listen for themselves.
In both of the four-minute clips, officers are requested to respond Code 3, meaning in an emergency response posture.
Here is the first:
And the second.
Although this is labeled “redacted” clip, it is the 43-minute long clip.
About 21 minutes into the clip one of the officers asks if another is available for a phone call, and the next thing said is, “For everybody on the radio, right now they’re on a hold for something regarding the President,” and instructs officers on the detail to allow some traffic through the intersections while they wait.
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Shortly after that, the protective detail is informed:
“For everyone on the radio, right now POTUS is 421. He’s being seen, so we’re just kinda waiting to see how this is shaping out. So, for everybody’s knowledge, he’s 421 right now; we’re just trying to figure out what’s going on and we’re gonna go from there.”
Code 421 is a sick or injured person, according to LVMPD’s code sheet.
After that, there are about 20 hectic minutes of coordination as the protective detail quickly moves their resources from the route between Lindo Michoacan and MGM Grand, where Biden was slated to speak, to instead secure a route from Lindo Michoacan. All units were again requested to respond Code 3.