Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema testified under oath that she carried on a sexual relationship with her married bodyguard in at least five cities while serving in the U.S. Senate, and now his ex-wife wants more than $75,000 in damages.
Sinema, 50, gave a deposition on July 31 in which she described the first sexual encounter with Matthew Ammel, a member of her security detail, in detail. It happened around Memorial Day 2024 at a rented house in Napa, California. Court records obtained by the New York Post include Sinema's own words from that deposition.
"We were staying at an Airbnb in Napa, California. We were outside. Matt kissed me. We went inside and had sex," Sinema stated under oath.
The affair did not end there. Sinema confirmed sexual encounters in New York City, during a wedding hosted by CNN anchor Jessica Dean, at her apartment in Washington, D.C., on a fundraising trip in Colorado in August 2024, and at her Phoenix home in October 2024. Throughout all of it, she knew Ammel was married with three children. She had learned that fact in December 2023, months before the relationship turned physical.
Ammel had worked on Sinema's security team for roughly two years before the affair began. AP News reported that he was hired as head of security after retiring from the Army in 2022 and traveled with Sinema to locations including Napa Valley, Las Vegas, and Saudi Arabia.
Heather Ammel, Matthew Ammel's ex-wife and a mother of three, filed a civil lawsuit against Sinema under North Carolina's "alienation of affection" statute, a law that allows a spouse to sue a third party for breaking up a marriage. The couple had been married for 14 years when the affair began. They split in November 2024, and their divorce was finalized in March.
Heather Ammel's lawsuit alleges that she and Matthew had "a good and loving marriage" with "genuine love and affection" before Sinema pursued him, despite knowing he was married. She is seeking more than $75,000 in damages.
She discovered the affair, she testified, when her husband was "severely intoxicated" and she read a message on his phone. Earlier in 2024, Fox News reported, Heather Ammel had found "romantic and lascivious" messages between her husband and Sinema on the encrypted messaging app Signal.
Text messages entered into the court record show the depth of the relationship. One message from Sinema to Matthew Ammel read:
"I hope your day was okay. Thinking of you. I am with you. I keep waking up during my sleep and reaching over for your arms to hold me."
Sinema, the first openly bisexual person elected to Congress, left the Senate in January 2025 after choosing not to seek re-election. She had switched her party registration from Democrat to independent during her term. The affair with Ammel took place during the final year of her time in office.
Sinema's attorneys moved the case from North Carolina state court to federal court in January. Their core argument is not that the affair didn't happen, Sinema admitted it under oath, but that it didn't happen in North Carolina, where the alienation-of-affection law applies. The sexual encounters she described took place in California, New York, Washington, Colorado, and Arizona. None occurred on North Carolina soil before the couple separated, her legal team contends.
Breitbart reported that Sinema's legal team also attempted to subpoena Heather Ammel's therapy records, including session notes and intake forms, a move that Ammel's attorney contested as exceeding the scope of the court's discovery order.
Just The News reported that Sinema is actively seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. An evidentiary hearing in the federal case is scheduled for August 19.
Heather Ammel's deposition painted a complicated picture. She alleged that Sinema introduced her husband to psychedelics, apparently to help him cope with traumatic brain injuries and mental health disorders stemming from multiple military deployments to the Middle East. Sinema acknowledged in her own testimony that Ammel and other members of her security team suffered from traumatic brain injury.
"I cared about Matt," Sinema said in the deposition. "Matt and several other of the members of the security team suffered from traumatic brain injury."
But Heather Ammel did not reserve all her criticism for Sinema. She described her ex-husband as an "established liar and manipulator" and suggested he was likely "actively manipulating" both women at the same time.
One point of factual dispute remains unresolved in the depositions. Matthew Ammel claimed in his own testimony that a sexual encounter occurred in September 2024. Sinema said she was "fuzzy" on whether that happened. The discrepancy has not been settled by the court.
North Carolina is one of a handful of states that still allows alienation-of-affection lawsuits, sometimes called "homewrecker" suits. The law permits a spouse to sue a third party who allegedly interfered with and damaged the marriage. Most states repealed similar statutes decades ago, but North Carolina's version remains on the books and is used with some regularity.
Sinema's strategy to move the case into federal court and argue that the relationship took place entirely outside North Carolina is a direct challenge to whether the state's law can reach conduct that occurred elsewhere. The August 19 hearing could determine whether the case proceeds or gets thrown out on jurisdictional grounds.
The full docket for Ammel v. Sinema is publicly available through CourtListener, the legal records database. Whether Sinema's motion to dismiss succeeds or fails, the deposition transcripts already in the public record have laid bare the details of an affair that a sitting U.S. senator carried on with a married subordinate, a man on her own payroll, tasked with protecting her.
Accountability is supposed to run in both directions. When a former senator admits under oath to a months-long affair with a married employee and then fights the lawsuit on a technicality, the facts speak clearly enough on their own.
