At least two Pima County Board of Supervisors members plan to file a motion to vacate Sheriff Chris Nanos' office if he does not resign by Tuesday, a move that would strip the embattled lawman of his badge while the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie, remains unsolved after nearly three months.
The push to remove Nanos has nothing to do with a policy disagreement or a budget fight. It centers on something more basic: whether the sheriff lied under oath about his own disciplinary record.
Supervisor Steve Christy laid out the stakes plainly. As Fox News Digital reported, Christy said:
"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."
Supervisor Dr. Matt Heinz offered an even sharper assessment of the man running the county's largest law enforcement agency:
"This is accountability for a guy who has evaded accountability for decades and is himself a public safety threat."
The accusation at the heart of the effort is straightforward. In a sworn deposition taken in December, Nanos was asked whether he had ever been suspended during his law enforcement career. He answered "no."
Public records obtained by the Arizona Republic paint a picture that directly contradicts that sworn answer. Those records show Nanos served as a decoy who baited out drug dealers and would-be muggers while working for the El Paso Police Department. But he left that job in 1982, not on his own terms.
The records described the reasons for his departure as "insubordination" and "consistent inefficiency." In six years on the force, Nanos reportedly spent 37 days suspended. The allegations behind those suspensions included excessive use of force, off-duty gambling, and coming to work late or missing shifts altogether. He resigned in lieu of termination.
Nanos later joined the Pima County Sheriff's Department in the 1980s, where he eventually rose to the top job. But the gap between his sworn testimony and the documented El Paso record has given county officials the opening, and, they argue, the obligation, to act.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department addressed the discrepancies in March with a statement attributing problems in Nanos' resume to "clerical errors." That explanation has not satisfied his critics on the board or in the broader community.
The perjury allegations alone would be serious for any elected official. But the timing makes them far worse. Nancy Guthrie was snatched from her home on February 1. The search for her hits its 90th day on Friday. No suspect has been identified. No viable arrest has been made.
The sheriff's department has faced sustained criticism for its handling of the investigation. Earlier scrutiny focused on a misleading social media post from the department that drew public backlash and raised questions about whether officials were being straight with the community.
Meanwhile, physical evidence gathered near the Guthrie home has been the subject of intense public and expert analysis. The FBI matched a glove found near the home to a suspect seen on surveillance video, but the case has not advanced to an arrest.
Republican candidate Daniel Butierez has launched a formal recall campaign against Nanos, citing both the Guthrie investigation and the allegations about his falsified employment history. As the New York Post reported, Butierez did not mince words:
"Nanos has been an embarrassment to Tucson and to Pima County with this Nancy Guthrie case."
Butierez has 120 days from the start of recall proceedings to collect enough signatures to try to remove Nanos from office. But the supervisors' motion to vacate could render that timeline moot if it moves forward this week.
Nanos himself acknowledged the recall effort. He told 13 News, "We're aware of the recall, and it's the right of the people." Whether he extends that same deference to the board's motion remains to be seen.
The core question here is not complicated. A sheriff was asked under oath whether he had ever been suspended. He said no. Records show he was suspended repeatedly, 37 days' worth, before resigning to avoid being fired. If that is not perjury, the word has no meaning.
And the consequences of that dishonesty extend well beyond Nanos' career. Every case his department has handled, every affidavit his office has sworn to, every piece of testimony offered under his authority, all of it now carries an asterisk. Defense attorneys in Pima County will have a field day.
The Guthrie family, meanwhile, is left waiting. Ninety days is a long time for an 84-year-old woman to be missing. The blood evidence found at Nancy Guthrie's front door and the various theories that have circulated publicly about the case have not produced a resolution.
Retired law enforcement professionals have weighed in on everything from the physical evidence to the public fixation with certain persons of interest, but none of that outside analysis substitutes for the work the sheriff's department was supposed to do.
The question now is whether Nanos will step aside voluntarily before Tuesday or force the board to act. Either way, the damage is done. The man entrusted with finding a missing woman could not even be trusted to tell the truth about his own record.
Several open questions remain. It is unclear which court or proceeding produced the December deposition in which Nanos denied ever being suspended. It is also unclear whether a formal perjury referral has been made to prosecutors, or whether the supervisors' motion to vacate is the full extent of the accountability Nanos will face.
What is clear is that the people of Pima County, and the family of Nancy Guthrie, deserve a sheriff's office led by someone whose word can be taken at face value. That is not a high bar. It is the lowest bar in law enforcement. And the current sheriff, by the available record, failed to clear it.
Nanos has previously acknowledged leaving the El Paso job under adverse circumstances, but the gap between that admission and his sworn denial under oath is the kind of contradiction that ends careers, and should.
When the people who enforce the law cannot be honest about their own past, the law itself loses its authority. Pima County's supervisors appear to understand that. The only question is whether the sheriff does.
