FBI Director Kash Patel has accused Arizona's Pima County Sheriff's Department of keeping federal agents at arm's length during the most important early phase of the Nancy Guthrie investigation, using a 5 May interview to argue that crucial time was lost after the 84-year-old vanished from her Tucson home.

Kash Patel says FBI was initially 'kept out' of Nancy Guthrie investigationhttps://t.co/zQMypK69TT

Nancy Guthrie, the mother ofTodaypresenter Savannah Guthrie, was reported missing on 1 February after she failed to arrive at a friend's house to watch a livestreamed church service, and investigators have said they believe she was taken from her home against her will. Before that, she had spent the evening with her daughter Annie Guthrie and son in law Tommaso Cioni, while a doorbell camera later captured a masked person at her front door in the early hours.

Patel's complaint was not subtle. Speaking on Sean Hannity's podcast, he said theFBI was 'kept out of the investigation' for four days, a period he described as unforgivable in a missing-persons case, arguing that the first 48 hours are often when evidence is found, witnesses are sharpest, and digital trails are still active.

Patel was not arguing over bureaucratic etiquette. He was arguing that delay itself may have shaped the case. In his telling, once the FBI was finally allowed in, agents quickly pushed for material that local investigators had not yet secured, including cached footage connected to the Ring doorbell system.

FBI Director Kash Patel sounded off on the Pima County Sheriff's handling of the Nancy Guthrie case during an interview on "Hang out with Sean Hannity," released on Tuesday.https://t.co/91xKAqXY4M

He said the bureau worked with Google to retrieve the image of the masked figure seen at Guthrie's home, despite the apparent lack of a subscription that would have preserved all available footage automatically. In Patel's version of events, that image did not appear through routine luck. It appeared because federal investigators asked the obvious hard question before the data vanished for good.

At this stage it is still a claim, no arrest has been made and no public charging document has laid out a full evidential chain. Readers should resist the temptation to turn a fragment of video into a finished story simply because one powerful official sounds certain.

Patel also took aim at howDNA evidence was handled. He said the FBI offered to test material recovered at the scene at Quantico and even had a fixed-wing aircraft ready to move it, but local authorities chose instead to send the evidence to a private laboratory in Florida.

WAR OF WORDS: FBI Director Kash Patel ripped into the Pima County Sheriff's Department, claiming the agency was locked out of the Nancy Guthrie case for four days. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos responded, saying his department began coordinating with the FBI "without delay."pic.twitter.com/uRNNVP9xoe

Source: International Business Times UK