Former Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema acknowledged under oath that she carried on a sexual relationship with her married bodyguard, and now his ex-wife is suing her in a North Carolina courtroom for breaking up a 14-year marriage.
Legal documents obtained by Breitbart News show the former Democrat-turned-Independent senator sat for a deposition in which she described the start of her relationship with Matthew Ammel, who served as her security guard while she represented Arizona in the U.S. Senate. Heather Ammel, Matthew's ex-wife, filed suit under North Carolina's "alienation of affection" statute, a law that allows a spouse to take legal action against a third party for conduct that contributed to the collapse of a marriage.
Sinema's sworn testimony was blunt. She told lawyers the first physical encounter happened around Memorial Day 2024 at a rented house in California's Napa Valley.
"We were staying at an Airbnb in Napa, California. We were outside. Matt kissed me. We went inside and had sex."
That testimony, per the deposition records, described the first time the two kissed or had sex. Sinema had announced her retirement from the Senate just two months earlier, in March 2024, saying she would not seek reelection.
Fox News reported that the affair did not end in Napa. Sinema testified to multiple sexual encounters with Ammel across several states, New York City, Washington, D.C., Aspen, Colorado, and Phoenix, Arizona, while she was still serving in office. She acknowledged she knew throughout that Ammel was married and had three children.
Court filings also include text messages between Sinema and Ammel. One message from Sinema, read aloud during Heather Ammel's own deposition, said: "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 described Sinema in a June 2024 text to her husband as "a woman who is willing to break up a family."
The Ammels had been married for 14 years before the split. Legal documents referenced in the case detail what Public Radio East described as "racy texts and luxury trips to Napa Valley and Saudi Arabia." Sinema's legal team, however, has argued the relationship did not take place on North Carolina soil until after the couple had already separated, a jurisdictional argument central to her defense.
Sinema's attorney, Steven Epstein, took the legal fight a step further by issuing a subpoena for Heather Ammel's therapist's records. The subpoena sought session dates, clinical notes, intake forms, invoices, and other communications related to Heather Ammel from 2024, the Phoenix New Times reported in June.
Heather Ammel's attorney, Thomas Van Camp, first asked Epstein to withdraw the subpoena voluntarily. When that failed, Van Camp filed a motion with the court to block it, arguing the request was "completely unrelated to the issue of Defendant's contacts with North Carolina" and fell outside the scope of the court's discovery order.
The subpoena maneuver drew attention because it signaled Sinema's team was willing to probe the emotional and psychological state of the woman suing her, a tactic that, whatever its legal merit, carries obvious personal costs for a plaintiff already dealing with the public unraveling of her marriage. It is not the kind of conduct that earns sympathy, particularly from a former senator who built a political brand around empowerment and personal accountability.
Just The News reported that Sinema is seeking outright dismissal of the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds, with an evidentiary hearing scheduled for August 19. Her defense rests on the claim that North Carolina's alienation-of-affection law cannot reach her because she lacks sufficient ties to the state and the relationship did not occur there until after the Ammels had already separated.
North Carolina is one of a handful of states that still allow alienation-of-affection claims, sometimes called "homewrecker" lawsuits. The law permits a spouse to sue a third party who engaged in sexual conduct with their partner when that conduct contributed to the end of the marriage. Sinema's team is not disputing the relationship itself. The argument is narrower: that the wrong court is hearing the case.
No ruling on Van Camp's motion to block the therapist subpoena has been reported. The current status of that dispute, and whether the court has weighed in on the scope of discovery, remain open questions heading into the August 19 hearing.
Sinema left the Democratic Party in 2022 and registered as an Independent, though she had originally won her Senate seat as a Democrat. Her retirement announcement in March 2024 came just weeks before the relationship with Ammel allegedly turned physical. The timeline raises an obvious question the deposition did not resolve: whether the affair played any role in her decision not to seek reelection. Nothing in the court filings addresses that point directly.
The case adds Sinema's name to a growing list of political figures, on both sides of the aisle, whose personal conduct has become public through legal proceedings. Maine's Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson recently faced scrutiny over his own family history, while a Pastors for Trump founder suspended his congressional campaign after a texting scandal. Personal failures cross party lines. But the pattern among Democrats who built careers on moral authority and institutional trust, and then evade accountability when their own conduct comes under a spotlight, carries a particular weight with voters who value consistency.
Sinema spent years in Washington positioning herself as a maverick willing to buck her own party. She cast herself as someone guided by principle rather than partisan loyalty, a framing that earned her admirers and enemies alike. Whatever one thinks of her Senate record, the deposition paints a different picture: a sitting senator who knowingly pursued a relationship with a married father of three, and whose legal team then sought to pry open his ex-wife's therapy records to gain an advantage in court.
Sinema's defense may ultimately succeed on jurisdictional grounds. Courts resolve these questions on the law, not on public opinion. But the facts she confirmed under oath are already part of the record, and no procedural ruling will make them disappear.
When you spend a career telling voters you answer to a higher standard, the standard eventually answers back.
