Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema admitted under oath to a months-long sexual relationship with her married security guard, and now his ex-wife is suing her for wrecking a 14-year marriage.
Sinema, the Arizona Democrat-turned-independent who left office at the beginning of 2025, sat for a deposition on July 31 at a law office in Raleigh, North Carolina. There, she described in detail at least six sexual encounters with Matthew Ammel, the security guard she employed, spanning five cities from Memorial Day 2024 through October 2024. Ammel was married with three children the entire time. Fox News Digital first reported on the deposition testimony and accompanying court filings.
Ammel's ex-wife, Heather Ammel, brought the lawsuit in North Carolina under the state's alienation-of-affection law, a statute that allows a spouse to sue a third party for breaking up a marriage. She alleges Sinema pursued the relationship with full knowledge that Ammel was married, and that the affair destroyed what had been a stable family. The couple separated on November 1, 2024. Their divorce was finalized in March 2026.
The deposition testimony reads like an itinerary. Sinema testified that the first encounter happened around Memorial Day 2024 at an Airbnb in Napa, California. She was traveling with friends Penny and Grant Croissant, along with Ammel and another member of her security detail.
Sinema told the lawyer questioning her:
"We were staying at an Airbnb in Napa, California. We were outside. Matt kissed me. We went inside and had sex."
In June 2024, Sinema testified, she and Ammel were "intimate" in her hotel room in New York City. The occasion was the wedding of CNN anchor Jessica Dean. By mid-July, Sinema said, they had sex again at her apartment in Washington, D.C., after she arrived on a red-eye flight from the West Coast. A fourth encounter followed in mid-August in Aspen, Colorado, during what Sinema described as a fundraising trip.
A fifth encounter, in late September, again in Washington, Sinema said she could not recall. But Matthew Ammel confirmed it in his own deposition. A sixth encounter took place at Sinema's house in Phoenix in October 2024, just weeks before the Ammels separated. Court papers filed earlier this year confirmed Sinema admitted to the romantic relationship beginning in May 2024, approximately five months before Ammel left his wife.
Sinema was still a sitting U.S. senator during every one of these encounters. Ammel was on her payroll as her bodyguard. That power dynamic, employer and employee, senator and security detail, runs through the entire case.
Court filings include a screenshot of a text message Sinema sent Ammel that reads: "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." Heather Ammel read the message aloud during her own deposition, having found it on her husband's phone.
Another text from Sinema to Ammel said: "Putting my hand on your heart. I'll see you soon. I miss you." When a lawyer asked Sinema whether she understood that a wife reading such a message might be alarmed, Sinema answered with a single word: "Yes."
Sinema also sent Ammel a photo of herself in a towel. When pressed on it, she pivoted to athletics.
"I'm an endurance athlete. So a photograph of me with cupping marks is about sports."
The explanation drew no follow-up in the portion of the deposition described in the filings. Whether the court found it persuasive remains to be seen. Personal scandals involving Democratic officeholders have become a recurring pattern in recent years, Maine Democrat Graham Platner faced fallout over sexually explicit texts to multiple women during his own Senate campaign.
Heather Ammel did not learn about the affair all at once. In June 2024, the same month Sinema and Matthew Ammel were in New York together, Heather sent her husband a text describing the former senator as "insidious" and "a woman who is willing to break up a family." She had discovered "romantic and lascivious" messages the two exchanged on the encrypted messaging app Signal, AP News reported.
In her deposition, Heather Ammel described her husband as an "established liar and manipulator." She said she believed he was "actively manipulating" both her and Sinema. She testified that the affair came fully to light when Matthew Ammel came home "severely intoxicated" while the couple was staying at her parents' house.
Her lawsuit alleges that before Sinema's interference, the Ammels had "a good and loving marriage" with "genuine love and affection." The complaint, filed under North Carolina's alienation-of-affection statute, seeks at least $75,000 in damages. North Carolina is one of a handful of states that still allows a spouse to hold a third party legally responsible for destroying a marriage.
The allegations extend beyond the bedroom. Sinema reportedly gave Ammel a job as a national security fellow in her Senate office while he continued working as her bodyguard, and she allegedly paid for psychedelic treatment for him, according to the lawsuit's allegations. Those details paint a picture of entanglement that went well beyond a casual relationship, a senator using her office resources to benefit the married man she was sleeping with.
Sinema's attorneys have not denied the affair. Instead, they moved the case from North Carolina state court to federal court, then filed to dismiss it entirely. Their argument: because the sexual relationship took place in California, New York, Washington, Colorado, and Arizona, but never in North Carolina, the court lacks personal jurisdiction over Sinema.
Steven Epstein, Sinema's attorney, argued in the motion that "Defendant's conduct related to her romantic relationship with Mr. Ammel does not connect her to North Carolina in a meaningful way" and that "jurisdiction over her in this action does not comport with due process." The Washington Examiner reported on the jurisdictional strategy.
It is a revealing legal posture. Sinema's defense does not contest the facts of the affair. It does not deny that she knew Ammel was married. It simply argues that because none of the encounters happened on North Carolina soil, the state's courts have no business hearing the case. An evidentiary hearing is scheduled for August 19.
Sinema's trajectory from Democratic rising star to independent senator to defendant in an alienation-of-affection lawsuit is a steep fall. She is hardly the only Democratic figure whose private conduct has collided with public expectations. A second accuser recently came forward against Maine Democrat Graham Platner with far more serious allegations of sexual misconduct.
What makes this case stand out is not simply the affair. Elected officials have had affairs before, and the public has rendered its own verdicts in those cases. What distinguishes this one is the power imbalance and the paper trail.
Sinema was a sitting United States senator. Ammel worked for her. She paid his salary. She later gave him an additional role in her Senate office. She knew he had a wife and three children. And she testified to all of it under oath, not as an apology, but as a legal strategy to avoid jurisdiction in North Carolina. The encounters she described spanned nearly half a year and crisscrossed the country, from wine country to Manhattan to the halls of power in Washington. Sinema's own sworn testimony provided the most damaging details in the case.
The Democratic Party has spent years positioning itself as the party that takes power imbalances seriously, particularly when a boss sleeps with a subordinate. Sinema left the party, but she built her career inside it. Leaked communications have embarrassed other Democratic senators in recent months, but few cases involve a sitting lawmaker's own sworn testimony laying out the misconduct in such clinical detail.
Whether the court keeps the case or grants Sinema's dismissal motion, the deposition record is now public. Sinema admitted what she did, city by city, month by month. Her only argument is that she did it in the wrong states for North Carolina to care.
When accountability depends on geography instead of conduct, the system is not working for the people it was built to protect.
