FBI Director Kash Patel has accused the Pima County Sheriff's Department in Arizona of 'keeping the FBI out' of the Nancy Guthrie investigation for four crucial days, saying the delay may have cost detectives the vital first 48-hour window in the case of the missing 84‑year‑old, who vanished from her Tucson home on 1 February.

The latest controversy erupted whenKash Patel discussed the Guthrie case on Sean Hannity's podcast, Hang Out with Sean Hannity. Patel, now FBI director, said that 'for four days we were kept out of the investigation', arguing that the Pima County Sheriff's Department initially sidelined federal agents rather than treating them as full partners.

Patel framed that gap as more than an administrative disagreement. He repeatedly stressed that in a disappearance like Nancy Guthrie's, the first 48 hours are often the most valuable for securing leads, preserving physical evidence and coordinating searches before memories fade and digital records vanish.

According to Patel's account, the FBI was ready to move aggressively once it was brought in. He told Hannity the bureau had arranged with Google to recover cached footage from a doorbell camera system, data that might otherwise have been overwritten.

The sharpest criticism from Patel centres on how DNA evidence was handled. On Hannity's podcast, he said theFBI had 'an airplane ready to take DNA from the Nancy Guthrie crime scene to Quantico'in Virginia for rapid analysis, with the promise that federal labs could have processed it 'within days.'

Instead, Patel said, Sheriff Chris Nanos chose to send the samples to a private laboratory in Florida. 'Our labs are just better than any other private lab out there and we didn't get a chance to do that,' Patel told Hannity, calling the decision a missed opportunity and saying he understood public 'frustrations.'

NewsNation reporter Brian Entin, who has been on the ground in Tucson since the early days of the search, amplified Patel's account on X, noting that he himself 'didn't know about the airplane on standby' until Patel revealed it.

The FBI had an airplane ready to take DNA from the Nancy Guthrie crime scene to Quantico early on, but the sheriff instead decided to send the DNA to a private lab in Florida.I didn't know about the airplane on standby, but Kash Patel said it on Sean Hannity's podcast today.

Entin also highlighted Patel's claim that Nanos 'held off the FBI for 4 full days', a detail that has fuelled anger from some members of the public already sceptical of the sheriff's handling of the case.

Online, criticism of Nanos has hardened into calls for him to step aside, with one commenter accusing him of 'botching this case' and others asking how the Guthrie family must feel watching decisions they see as avoidable.

Source: International Business Times UK