Pima County supervisors move to oust sheriff leading Nancy Guthrie kidnapping probe over perjury claims
TUCSON, Ariz. — The Arizona sheriff leading the investigation into the suspected abduction of Nancy Guthrie is facing calls from two members of his county’s five-person board of supervisors to step down amid allegations that he lied about his past record as a Texas cop before joining his department in the 1980s.
Guthrie is the 84-year-old mother of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, and her unsolved kidnapping has drawn national attention to Pima County in Arizona, where Sheriff Chris Nanos is three months into a search for her while fending off lawsuits from current and former members of his own department and trading barbs with the FBI.
"This is accountability for a guy who has evaded accountability for decades and is himself a public safety threat," said Dr. Matt Heinz, a member of the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
Heinz, a Democrat, and the five-person board’s only Republican, Supervisor Steve Christy, both told Fox News Digital they plan to move to have Nanos’ office vacated at a meeting next week following allegations that he lied about a history of suspensions and other disciplinary actions he received in the 1970s and 1980s as a member of the El Paso Police Department.
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They'll need more support to succeed, however, and it's not immediately clear that they have it.
"If the board doesn’t want to move ahead with vacating the office, I’m pretty sure that they will want to do something meaningful like a resolution expressing lack of confidence and the referral for prosecution," Heinz said.
It doesn't take a majority to ask the state attorney general to look into recently lobbed allegations of perjury, he said. But a unanimous vote would add weight, he added.
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If an investigation leads to charges and then a conviction, Nanos would be forced to step down, he said.
The board doesn’t have broad authority over the sheriff because he holds an elected office. However, Christy said members have some authority to act based on an 1873 Arizona law.
That's because Nanos allegedly missed a deadline to meet the board's demand to answer questions under oath, the two supervisors said.
"He's already failed that request. The timeline for him to provide that is over," Christy told Fox News Digital. "So there's no going back...It's too late for that. So we're into the next phase of if he doesn't resign, then we will move toward, or at least two of us on the board will move toward, vacating his office."
Christy added that since all of the board members and sheriff are duly elected officials, both sides are using outside counsel rather than the county attorney's office, costing taxpayers more money.
"My position is that unless in the next few days before the board meeting next week, if he doesn't resign or if he doesn't retire in an honorable fashion, which is available to him, then I will move and I will support any effort by the Board of Supervisors to vacate the office, which is part of the regulation," Christy told Fox News Digital.
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The allegations of perjury originated after a deposition in a lawsuit against Nanos from the president of the county deputies union.
According to a transcript, the sheriff said under oath that he’d never been suspended as a law enforcement officer.
However, records from El Paso appear to contradict that claim. He was suspended numerous times and resigned in lieu of termination, according to public records obtained by the Arizona Republic and later posted to the county board’s website.
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Then an attorney for Nanos explained it like this:
"Sheriff Nanos resigned from the El Paso Police Department in 1982. At the time of his resignation, he held the rank of corporal. His resignation came in the wake of a dispute with a supervisor over the towing of vehicles. The supervisor wanted to impose a three-day suspension for insubordination. Sheriff Nanos appealed that recommended discipline to the Chief, who found in favor of the supervisor. Rather than accept a three-day suspension, Sheriff Nanos offered to resign in lieu of discipline. The Chief accepted his offer and Sheriff Nanos resigned."
The record indicates Nanos resigned in lieu of "termination," not in lieu of "discipline," which Heinz said is an inaccurate portrayal. Nanos had been suspended multiple times and subjected to other disciplinary actions for a number of alleged incidents involving tardiness to work, violations of department orders, off-duty conduct and negligently firing a gun.
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Although Nanos declined to answer questions in person under oath, Heinz said he sent a "notarized statement" to the board "swearing to the veracity of the report under penalty of perjury."
This came after the deadline, however, but Heinz said the board will likely accept it anyway.
That may not help the sheriff.
"He lied under oath to the board about his separation from El Paso PD," Heinz said Wednesday. "And we will consider referring his perjury to the [attorney general] for prosecution."
Nanos and his office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It’s been more than 13 weeks since Guthrie’s abduction from her home in Tucson’s Catalina Foothills neighborhood drew a national spotlight to the community.
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A ban on parking in her neighborhood remained in place weeks after the massive media presence evaporated, and there have been few substantive updates aside from news that a hair sample recovered inside Guthrie’s home has been sent from the sheriff’s preferred private lab in Florida to the FBI.
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That detail itself led to renewed strain between Nanos and the FBI. Federal investigators had wanted to have the DNA tests done at Quantico from the beginning, but Nanos, whose department is heading the investigation, refused.
Although tensions had cooled in the months that followed, Nanos and FBI Director Kash Patel traded barbs publicly Tuesday.
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"What we, the FBI, do is say, ‘Hey, we're here to help. What do you need?’" Patel told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on his podcast, "Hang Out with Sean Hannity."
"And for four days, we were kept out of the investigation," he added.
Nanos countered with a statement claiming the FBI had been involved in the probe from the start, and he downplayed concerns about his earlier decision.
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"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," he said in a statement Tuesday.
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"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," he added. "While the FBI Director was not on scene, coordination with the Bureau began without delay."
The task force member was a county detective qualified to be part of the FBI Joint Task Force who acts as a liaison between the county and the bureau, according to the sheriff's department.
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Federal law enforcement sources previously told Fox News Digital that it took days before the FBI was asked to help.
In addition to calling for the sheriff to step down, Heinz is also urging him to hand over leadership of the Guthrie investigation to the FBI.
"It’s ridiculous," he said. "Almost every other local jurisdiction would have done so by now. Actually, it usually happens within days because then the FBI covers the vast majority of the cost of the investigation instead of the county or city. So aside from maybe NYC, LA, Chicago, Houston and some other large cities, any other jurisdiction would have asked for the FBI to take the lead."
There is a combined reward of more than $1.2 million for information that cracks the case. The family is urging tipsters to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI.