The case in North Carolina paints Kyrsten Sinema as breaking up the marriage of a troubled Army veteran and alludes to some of the exotic travel that led to ethics complaints against Sinema before leaving office.
A lawsuit claims former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema destroyed a 14-year marriage by becoming romantically involved with a man who was part of her security detail while she was still in office and who now works for Arizona State University.
The case in North Carolina paints Sinema as breaking up the marriage of a troubled Army veteran and alludes to some of the exotic travel that led to ethics complaints against Sinema before leaving office.
The lawsuit seeks more than $25,000 and is filed under that state’s “homewrecker law.” It came to light on Jan. 14, when the matter was transferred to federal court in that state.
Sinema was not immediately available for comment.
What does the lawsuit against Sinema allege?
In her lawsuit, Heather Ammel claims Matthew Joseph Ammel accompanied Sinema on luxe trips to Napa Valley, Saudi Arabia and sipped Dom Perignon with Sinema and Cindy McCain at an event in Las Vegas.
Sinema sent Ammel, 39, a photo of herself wrapped in a towel, engaged in “lascivious” chat with him on a social media messaging app and helped him get psychedelic treatments, the lawsuit alleges. Sinema added him to her Senate staff in her final months in office.
Last year, Sinema, 49, convinced Arizona lawmakers to pour $5 million of taxpayer funds into clinical trials of ibogaine, a psychedelic drug and a one-time investment of her employer, law firm Hogan Lovells.
“Prior to (Sinema’s) intentional and malicious interference, (Heather Ammel) and Mr. Ammel had a good and loving marriage, and genuine love and affection existed between them,” the lawsuit said.
Matthew Ammel appeared with Sinema at the Legislature in 2025 when Sinema appealed to lawmakers to finance ibogaine trials. He also appeared with her at the Future Security Forum, an event ASU co-hosted last fall. Ammel is identified on ASU’s website as a fellow with the school.
In January 2025, newly out of office, Sinema gave $3 million of her former campaign funds to help ASU research AI, an industry she now works for.
The suit said the Ammels married in 2010 and split up in 2024 after he accompanied Sinema on a trip to Saudi Arabia. They have three children.
At the Legislature, Matthew Ammel presented himself as a changed man since taking ibogaine once nearly two years before.
“The Army kind of got cut short for me because my body fell apart on me. … I didn’t really have a purpose after that,” Ammel said in a broken voice. “I am not on any pharmaceuticals at this point other than hormones. … I think this is one of the main things that can alleviate the dependency on pharmaceuticals, for sure.”
Matthew Ammel’s troubles may not be behind him.
He was scheduled for a hearing on Jan. 29 in Moore County District Court in Carthage, North Carolina, on felony charges of assault by strangulation of an emergency worker on Nov. 20.
The worker was “explaining to the defendant he was not allowed to leave the facility because of his (involuntary commitment) order.”
“The defendant slammed the victim to the floor, placed him on his side, hugged his body from behind and wrapped his arm around the victim’s neck for a period of time,” records show.
Court records say Matthew Ammel pushed Phillip Dandridge up against a wall, slammed him to the ground and repeatedly punched him.
Matthew Ammel worked as part of Sinema’s security team
Matthew Ammel was deployed to Afghanistan and the Middle East four times during his service, according to the lawsuit.
Heather Ammel describes her estranged husband as suffering from substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.
Before meeting Sinema in 2022, he “began to rely heavily on marijuana and was emotionally unstable,” the suit said.
While he pieced together various jobs, he met Sinema’s head of security, who hired him to work for her beginning in April 2022.
Matthew Ammel received $121,000 in pay from Sinema’s campaign and affiliated political-action committee, records show. He also received another $6,800 in reimbursements for travel and security expenses.
Before the split
In September 2023, word leaked on a memo from Sinema’s campaign suggesting a “path to victory” for her in 2024. By that time, Sinema’s fundraising had plummeted, and she remained silent on her reelection intentions.
Not long afterward, a shake-up to Sinema’s security team occurred.
The lawsuit suggests that the onetime head of security for Sinema, Vrindavan Bellord, the sister of Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, suspected Sinema was involved with someone on her security detail. That came as Bellord was ending her work with Sinema in the fall of 2023.
According to the lawsuit, a person who fits Bellord’s position, in the appropriate time frame, told Matthew Ammel she was concerned that Sinema was having sexual relations with “other security members.”
“She encouraged Mr. Ammel to leave with her, but Mr. Ammel decided to stay due to the financial security of the job.”
About that time, he traveled alone with Sinema to Napa Valley, and later told his wife if anyone had seen them together on the trip, “it would have appeared as if they were on a romantic getaway.”
In December 2023, he served as security for Sinema at a U2 concert at the Sphere in Las Vegas. He took his then-wife with him as a gift to her, the lawsuit said. They met as a group and went to McCain’s suite. McCain had assumed her role as executive director of the World Food Programme months earlier.
According to the lawsuit, Sinema handed Heather Ammel a glass and asked, “Did you ever think you would be drinking Dom Perignon in Cindy McCain’s suite?”
Weeks later, Heather Ammel discovered Sinema was texting Matthew Ammel “romantic and lascivious” messages on Signal, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims Matthew Ammel and Sinema texted during a State of the Union in which she said she didn’t attend because she “didn’t need to listen to some old man, President Biden, talk about the legislation that she wrote.”
Days before Sinema posted a video announcement that she would not seek a second term, Matthew Ammel attended Tempe’s annual Extra Innings music festival as Sinema’s security guard.
He acknowledged to his wife that Sinema “was handsy with him at this event,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit claims that “shortly thereafter” Matthew Ammel and Sinema traveled to San Francisco for a work trip. Sinema invited him to her hotel room and they spent hours together, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit claims the relations escalated from there.
In April 2024, Sinema invited him to her Washington, D.C., apartment. In May 2024, she paid for him to receive psychedelic treatment in Nashville. After the treatment, she flew Matthew Ammel to Napa Valley to work for her at a concert, and he stayed with Sinema and her friends at a rental property afterward.
He stopped wearing his wedding ring, saying for “public optics” it was better for it to not look like Sinema was putting her hands on a married man, the lawsuit said. He accompanied her to a wedding in New York and traveled to her then-home in Scottsdale.
In June 2024, Sinema placed Matthew Ammel on her Senate staff as a “defense and national security fellow,” which paid him nearly $42,000 in less than four months.
Heather Ammel confronted her husband and he said they were getting a divorce, the lawsuit said. Heather Ammel said she responded to one of Sinema’s texts to Matthew Ammel: “Are you having an affair with my husband? You took a married man away from his family.”
The lawsuit does not indicate what, if anything, Sinema replied.
Sinema took one of the Ammel children on a tour of the U.S. Capitol, and the whole family accompanied Sinema to a Taylor Swift concert in Miami in October 2024 that had been planned for months by then.
The Ammels traveled to Nashville to mark their anniversary, but shortly afterward he traveled to Saudi Arabia with Sinema. It was the end of the Ammels’ marriage.
North Carolina is one of the few states that still has a “homewrecker law” that allows civil liability for breaking up a marriage. Arizona eliminated such claims, legally known as “alienation of affection,” in 1973.
Who is Kyrsten Sinema?
Sinema left office in January 2025 after one tumultuous term in the Senate.
She was elected as a Democrat in 2018 and switched to an independent in 2022 as it became clear she could not survive a Democratic primary.
Sinema helped shape several bipartisan legislative achievements, including a trillion-dollar national infrastructure spending plan after then-President Joe Biden’s efforts on that issue had collapsed.
But as much as anything else, her support for the legislative filibuster, a Senate rule that stymied Democratic aims under Biden and now limits Republican goals under President Donald Trump, defined her tenure.
Reporting by Ronald J. Hansen, Arizona Republic / Arizona Republic
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
