Former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema acknowledged in a signed court declaration that she carried on a romantic and physically intimate relationship with a member of her own security detail, a man whose wife now wants Sinema to pay for wrecking her marriage.
Sinema is not hiding the affair. She is fighting the forum. Her attorney filed a motion this week asking a North Carolina federal court to toss the lawsuit entirely, arguing that the former senator's conduct has no meaningful connection to the state.
Heather Ammel filed suit against Sinema in September in North Carolina state court, AP News reported. The case was moved to federal court in January. It seeks financial damages under North Carolina's alienation of affection statute, a cause of action that allows a spouse to sue a third party for destroying a marriage. North Carolina is one of a handful of states that still recognize the claim.
Heather Ammel contends in her lawsuit that she and her husband Matthew had "a good and loving marriage" and that "genuine love and affection" existed between them before Sinema pursued him despite knowing he was married. The lawsuit alleges that Sinema's head of security hired Matthew Ammel after he retired from the Army in 2022, and that Sinema began an inappropriate relationship with him while he served on her protective detail.
The lawsuit further alleges that in early 2024, Heather Ammel discovered messages between Sinema and her husband on the Signal messaging app that were of "romantic and lascivious natures." That summer, the lawsuit alleges, Matthew Ammel stopped wearing his wedding ring and Sinema gave him a position on her Senate staff while he continued working as her bodyguard.
The Ammels separated in November 2024, the lawsuit states.
In a signed March 7 declaration attached to the dismissal motion, Sinema stated that her relationship with Matthew Ammel "became romantic and intimate" at the end of May 2024 and "physically intimate" over the following months in California, New York, Colorado, Arizona, and Washington, D.C. That is a notable admission for a former federal officeholder to put on the record in her own handwriting, and it forms the factual core of the case against her.
But Sinema's declaration also rejects Heather Ammel's allegations that Sinema made phone calls and sent internet communications to Matthew Ammel while he was physically present in North Carolina and at times with his wife and children.
Sinema's attorney Steven Epstein framed the dismissal motion around personal jurisdiction, the legal question of whether a court in a given state has authority over a defendant based on that defendant's contacts with the state. Epstein wrote Thursday that Sinema's "conduct related to her romantic relationship with Mr. Ammel does not connect her to North Carolina in a meaningful way."
Epstein acknowledged that Sinema did send Matthew Ammel a message while he was in North Carolina, but argued that it happened only after Ammel had already found a new place to live and "when the marriage was already over." Epstein wrote that no jury would believe one message "had any bearing on the destruction of marital love and affection."
The strategy is clear: Sinema is not denying the relationship. She is arguing that whatever happened between her and Matthew Ammel did not happen in North Carolina in any legally meaningful sense, and that the state's courts therefore have no business adjudicating the claim.
Alienation of affection is one of the oldest tort claims in American law, and most states have abolished it. North Carolina has not. The cause of action allows a plaintiff to recover damages by proving that a third party's conduct destroyed the love and affection that once existed in a marriage. It does not require proof of a sexual relationship, though such evidence typically strengthens the claim. Here, Sinema's own declaration supplies it.
That creates a tension at the heart of the defense. The facts Sinema admitted in her declaration could be powerful evidence on the merits. Her legal team is betting that none of it matters if the court decides it lacks jurisdiction over her in North Carolina.
The court has not yet ruled on the dismissal motion. Investigators and attorneys will need to establish the full scope of Sinema's communications directed to North Carolina, whether any of those contacts occurred while the marriage was still intact, and whether the single acknowledged message is sufficient to establish minimum contacts with the state for jurisdictional purposes.
Sinema declined to seek Senate reelection in 2024 after leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent. The AP reported she now works for a Washington-based legal and lobbying firm.
A former United States senator put her name on a sworn declaration confirming an affair with a subordinate on her security team, and the only legal question left is which state's courthouse gets to hold her accountable for it. North Carolina's alienation of affection law exists precisely for cases like this, and the jurisdictional escape hatch Sinema is reaching for should not obscure the substance of what she admitted under oath.
