President Donald Trump said Monday that those responsible for kidnapping Nancy Guthrie must release her unharmed or face what he described as the “most severe” federal penalties. In a brief phone interview with The Post, the president said he would want the Justice Department to seek the death penalty if the 84-year-old mother of NBC “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie is killed, The New York Post reported.
“The most, yeah — that’s true,” Trump said when asked if that meant the DOJ would pursue capital punishment.
Trump said the abductors would face “very, very severe — the most severe” federal consequences if Nancy Guthrie is found dead after being taken from her home outside Tucson on Feb. 1.
The president called Savannah Guthrie on Feb. 4 to offer federal assistance in the investigation. The FBI later recovered images and video showing a masked man standing at the front door of the suburban home.
Trump has spoken sparingly about the case as investigators continue searching for the elderly mother of three, who authorities believe may still be alive.
Over the weekend, authorities launched flights over the desert region carrying a high-tech Bluetooth device in hopes of detecting a signal from Nancy Guthrie’s pacemaker.
Federal charges are often brought in high-profile cases, particularly when there is an interstate component or a potential violation of federal law.
Arizona has the death penalty, though many of the 109 inmates on the state’s death row have been there for decades.
The state has carried out two executions since 2022. Those executions followed a nearly two-year pause by the Democrat led state government that was lifted in late 2024. The federal government can also pursue capital punishment and typically does so in the most notorious cases.
Those cases have included Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, and Dylann Roof, who carried out a racist mass shooting at a South Carolina church.
Former President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row.
Tsarnaev, Bowers, and Roof were excluded from those commutations.
Trump administration officials have said the remaining federal death row inmates will be moved to a federal supermax prison to serve their sentences under strict conditions.
The FBI has announced that investigators may have achieved a significant forensic development in the abduction of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, after a black glove recovered near her home appears consistent with the gloves worn by the masked suspect captured on surveillance footage the night she disappeared.
Federal authorities found the glove in a brush area approximately two miles from Guthrie’s residence in the Catalina Foothills on February 11. The discovery came one day after the FBI released an image of a masked man approaching Guthrie’s home on January 31 and followed multiple days of searches in nearby desert and brush areas.
In a statement Sunday, an FBI spokesperson said the glove containing a DNA profile “appears to match the gloves of the subject in the surveillance video.” The spokesperson added that the glove recovered with the DNA profile is different from others found in the area and visually consistent with those worn by the suspect.
Investigators collected roughly 16 gloves during the search effort. Most were discarded by search teams and determined to be unrelated to the case. The glove containing the DNA evidence was separated for further testing.
Authorities sent the glove to a private laboratory in Florida for forensic analysis. Samples reportedly arrived Friday, and preliminary DNA results were received Saturday. According to reporting from the New York Post, the testing identified an unknown male DNA profile.
The FBI said it is awaiting final quality control and official confirmation of the results, a process that typically takes about 24 hours.