Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, who is facing increased scrutiny as the hunt for the missing Nancy Guthrie nears the two-week mark, has been under the public microscope before.
New reports and court records show the sheriff has been embroiled in controversy several times over the past decade.
In the weeks leading up his 2024 re-election, which he won by a margin of 481 votes, Nanos placed opponent Heather Lappin, a lieutenant at the Pima County Jail, on administrative leave, ordering her not to discuss the reasoning for his decision, Pima County Sheriff's Department (PCSD) in breach of department rules, which Cross denied.
In a Pima County Deputy’s Organization claimed Nanos did not probe how the department's leadership handled the investigation into the incident, which led to another referral for an independent investigation by the Arizona attorney general's office.
Once again, the office FBI began investigating the department for misuse of civil asset forfeiture funds.
In many cases, funds confiscated by police from criminals can be kept and spent on approved items like more equipment for law enforcement.
In October of that year, Chief Deputy Chris Radtke was indicted on federal charges and accused of wrongly using hundreds of thousands of dollars of the forfeited assets. The department also reportedly spent $20,000 building a commercial kitchen to open a café that was run by Radtke's niece. Radtke took a plea deal, agreeing to plead guilty to three misdemeanor counts of theft of government property. He did not go to prison.
Nanos was never charged.
During that investigation, Nanos gave a fiery Guthrie investigation, Nanos has been accused of slow-rolling the FBI's involvement and wrongly shipping evidence to a private lab in Florida instead of to the FBI's headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.
Both of those claims he denied in an interview with Fox News' Matt Finn on Friday.
He told Finn that investigators have been using the Florida lab from the start of the investigation and that Guthrie family DNA, as well as other DNA, had already been sent there.
"Why split your evidence to two different labs that could create a conflict, but more importantly, it adds that additional step," he said. "This lab has this piece, this lab has that piece. Now they've got to converge those two pieces to make an elimination or identification. No, just send it to one lab. Let's go. They're both great labs. They both have great equipment and smart people.
"We trust the FBI’s crime lab. We’ve used them before. But, in this case, we started with that lab," he said. "It’s just that simple."
Nanos also denied the claim that his office delayed contacting the FBI for assistance in the case, saying he has no reason not to partner with the federal law enforcement agency, that it would be "absolutely crazy" not to do so and that his department and the FBI are working well together. He said he called the FBI Feb. 2, the first business day after the investigation began.
Nanos did not return a request for comment.