Kash Patel Blasts Pima County Sheriff for Botched Handling of Nancie Guthrie Case

Kash Patel is putting a local sheriff's office on blast -- and he's not sugarcoating it.

During a fiery sit-down on "Hang Out with Sean Hannity" released today, the FBI director went off over how the Nancy Guthrie case has been handled ... zeroing-in on the Pima County Sheriff's Department for keeping the FBI on the sidelines when it mattered most.

Check it out ... Patel says the FBI was locked out for four full days -- a delay he made clear is a huge deal in a missing-persons investigation.

"The first 48 hours of anyone's disappearance are the most critical," he said.

According to Patel, once agents were finally allowed access, they quickly delivered what became the biggest break in the case -- working directly with Google to pull cached data from a doorbell camera system to recover key footage that might've otherwise been lost.

But Patel's biggest gripe? He says Sheriff Chris Nanos' office turned down serious federal firepower. The FBI had hundreds of agents ready to deploy ... plus a plane prepped to rush DNA evidence to Quantico -- which Patel called the "best lab in the world."

Instead, the DNA was shipped to a private lab in Florida ... a move Patel clearly thinks cost valuable time.

"We would have analyzed it within days," he said.

Hannity didn’t mince words, either ... flatly calling the decision a "bad call" as Patel stopped short of saying it outright -- but made his frustration obvious.

As you know, Nancy Guthrie went missing on February 1, and after dozens of dead ends and tons of media coverage, there's been virtually no progress in the case.