TUCSON, AZ — The FBI was shut out of the Nancy Guthrie investigation for the first four days after the mother of the "Today Show" host Savannah Guthrie went missing, FBI Director Kash Patel claimed in a new interview.
"For four days we were kept out of the investigation," Patel said on Sean Hannity's podcast of the FBI's lack of involvement in the initial days of the Guthrie investigation. "The first 48 hours of anyone's disappearance are the most critical."
Nancy Guthrie has been missing since Feb. 1. Authorities in Pima County have said they believe she was taken from her Tucson, Arizona, home.
Patel was also critical of Pima County Chris Nanos for sending DNA samples to a private lab in Florida that has worked with the sheriff's office before -- instead of to the FBI forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia.
"We have Quantico, best lab in the world," Patel said, adding he had an aircraft "ready to move it immediately through the night."
He added, "I understand everybody's frustrations."
In a statement, the Pima County Sheriff Office said it was aware of Patel's statements in the podcast interview but said there was no delay in coordination with the FBI.
"Sheriff Nanos responded to the scene the night of the incident, providing immediate local leadership and oversight. A member of the FBI Task Force was also notified and present at that scene working alongside our personnel. The FBI was promptly notified by both our department and the Guthrie family. While the FBI Director was not on scene, coordination with the Bureau began without delay," the statement says.
Decisions about processing evidence "were made on scene based on operational needs," the sheriff's office statement said.
"The laboratory utilized by the Pima County Sheriff's Department and the FBI Laboratory in Quantico have worked in close partnership from the outset and continue to collaborate in the analysis of evidence," the sheriff's office statement said. "We remain committed to a thorough, coordinated, and fact-based investigation and will continue working closely with our federal partners as the process moves forward."
Last month, the FBI said it had received a hair sample tied to the Guthrie case that was collected in February.
"The FBI requested this material over two months ago," an FBI official said in a statement at the time. "The Pima County Sheriff's Office sent it to a private lab in Florida. Eleven weeks later, that lab has now transferred an original hair sample to the FBI Laboratory for testing. We remain fully committed to this investigation."
In the podcast interview, Patel took credit for obtaining the first images of the suspect -- captured tampering with the camera at Nancy Guthrie's front door on the morning of her disappearance.
"I called the leadership at Google, and I said, 'Look, we know that there was not a subscription service to capture all of the data that would have been captured had there been a subscription service. But can we go into the cache? Can we go into the deep data before it's deleted and see what we can find?' Patel said. "That's why you have that image, because the FBI worked with Google to put that image out," he said.
