A Pima County official says Sheriff Chris Nanos dressed her down after her office forwarded information about the Nancy Guthrie disappearance to the FBI, a claim that deepens questions about whether the sheriff's department has resisted federal involvement in one of Arizona's most closely watched missing-persons cases.

Suzanne Droubie, the county assessor whose office handles property records in Pima County, told the Arizona Republic that the sheriff confronted her after technicians in her office sent data the FBI had requested about the case. Droubie described a tense exchange in which Nanos expressed frustration that her cooperation with federal agents was generating leads his department then had to chase.

The account, first reported by Fox News Digital, lands more than 100 days after the 84-year-old mother of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie is believed to have been abducted from her home in the Catalina Foothills neighborhood on Feb. 1. It also arrives as two county supervisors openly seek to remove Nanos from office and as FBI Director Kash Patel has publicly accused the sheriff of keeping the bureau out of the investigation.

What the assessor described

Droubie told the Arizona Republic that the FBI requested information from her office and that her staff complied. The sheriff, she said, was not pleased. In her words:

"It was inferred that we were creating a lot of additional work for the sheriff's department, due to us providing this information to the FBI, and then them having the responsibility to follow up on all of those leads that were provided."

She said Nanos appeared agitated during the conversation but stopped short of calling it a confrontation in the traditional sense.

"I wouldn't categorize it as yelling, per se, as much as kind of scolding and expressing frustration with all of the [leads he was receiving], their obligation to follow up on them, and that my office was, was actually being more harm than good by providing more leads that they just had to follow up with."

Droubie added that the sheriff "seemed like he was very stressed, very frustrated." She was out of the office on Tuesday and could not immediately be reached by Fox News Digital for further comment.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department offered no rebuttal. A spokesperson said only, "We are not authorized to provide any information or comment regarding these claims."

A pattern of sidelining the FBI

Droubie's account fits a broader pattern that has drawn national attention. Early in the investigation, the FBI wanted to send DNA evidence collected in the case to its lab in Quantico, Virginia. Instead, the sheriff's department routed the sample to a contracted lab in Florida.

Eleven weeks passed before that Florida lab finally forwarded the sample to the FBI for more advanced testing. The delay raised pointed questions about whether the sheriff's office was prioritizing its own control of the case over the speed and resources the bureau could offer. The FBI's eventual takeover of the DNA testing underscored how drawn out the forensic work had become.

Last week, the friction went fully public. Sheriff Nanos and FBI Director Patel traded barbs over each other's handling of the case. Patel said the FBI had been "kept out of the investigation." Nanos fired back. The exchange made clear what observers had suspected for weeks: the two agencies were not working as partners.

The public clash between the sheriff and the FBI director marked a rare moment of open hostility between local and federal law enforcement in a case involving a vulnerable, elderly victim.

Supervisors move against Nanos

The Guthrie case is not the only source of trouble for Nanos. Two members of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, Dr. Matt Heinz and Steve Christy, told Fox News Digital last week that they plan to move to vacate the sheriff's office under a rarely invoked state law.

The effort stems from unrelated allegations that Nanos committed perjury. Fox News reported that public records indicate Nanos had been suspended multiple times during his tenure with the El Paso Police Department and resigned in lieu of termination, details that appear to conflict with his sworn statement that he had never been suspended as a law enforcement officer. The supervisors said they may refer the alleged perjury to the Arizona attorney general. If an investigation led to charges and a conviction, Nanos would be forced to step down.

Heinz did not mince words about the sheriff's fitness for office. "This is accountability for a guy who has evaded accountability for decades and is himself a public safety threat," he said.

Christy reiterated his position on Tuesday morning, 100 days after Guthrie's disappearance:

"I will make, second and/or support any motion or efforts to vacate."

The Board of Supervisors was expected to address the perjury concerns at its meeting that evening. The outcome of that session was not available at the time of reporting.

Credibility questions inside the department

The perjury allegations against Nanos are not the only credibility problem plaguing the sheriff's office. The lead detective originally assigned to the Guthrie disappearance was previously fired from law enforcement for striking a handcuffed suspect, a fact that raised questions about the department's judgment in staffing its highest-profile case.

Meanwhile, more than 14 weeks have passed since Nancy Guthrie vanished. No arrest has been announced. No suspect has been publicly identified. The investigation that began as a local missing-persons case has become a national story, largely because of the institutional dysfunction surrounding it rather than any breakthrough in solving it.

Some observers have questioned whether the sheriff's office deliberately minimized certain investigative angles. A retired Arizona law enforcement officer suggested that a possible Mexico connection in the case may have been downplayed in part to keep the FBI from asserting jurisdiction.

That theory remains unproven. But Droubie's account, a county official saying the sheriff scolded her simply for cooperating with a federal request, gives it a harder edge. If the sheriff's department was frustrated by leads generated through FBI cooperation, the question becomes whether Nanos was managing an investigation or managing his control over one.

An 84-year-old woman is still missing

Nancy Guthrie, 84, is believed to have been taken from her home in the Catalina Foothills on Feb. 1. More than three months after she vanished, the key facts still do not add up, and the public still has no answers about what happened to her.

What the public does have is a mounting record of friction, delay, and defensiveness from the agency charged with finding her. DNA evidence sat in a Florida lab for eleven weeks before reaching the FBI. A county official who cooperated with federal agents says she was rebuked for it. The sheriff's department refuses to comment. And two elected supervisors are now trying to remove the sheriff from office entirely.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department spokesperson's statement, "We are not authorized to provide any information or comment regarding these claims", may be the most revealing detail in the entire episode. When a law enforcement agency cannot even address an allegation that its leader discouraged cooperation with the FBI in an abduction case, that silence speaks for itself.

Somewhere in this mess is an 84-year-old woman who deserves better than a turf war. Every day the investigation spends tangled in institutional ego is a day Nancy Guthrie's family spends without answers, and without her.