WINSTON-SALEM, NC — Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema recounted the moment that she was caught red-handed texting her bodyguard lover by his wife in dramatic testimony in federal court on Wednesday — as she admitted to sleeping with the father-of-two military vet.
“I’ll see you soon,” Sinema texted Matthew Ammel — only to receive the reply “Are you having an affair with my husband?” — apparently from his wife Heather.
She followed up with the message: “You took a married man away from his family.”
Ammel’s now-ex-wife sued Sinema, 50, last year alleging “alienation of affection,” taking advantage of North Carolina’s “homewrecker law,” which permits women to seek damages from their ex-spouse’s lovers.
Heather Ammel is asking for more than $75,000 in compensation.
But Sinema, the first openly bisexual member of congress, claimed in court that she had no romantic feelings Matthew during the final months of her political career in 2024.
“I’m not like that,” Sinema told her attorney, Steven Epstein, when asked under oath about the tone of her conversations with her bodyguard..
“When the opportunity presented itself, and when Mr. Ammel approached me, we had sex,” she added flatly.
Sinema, who left the Senate in 2025 after serving a single term, pushed the suit to federal court in January in order to argue that the dalliance took place outside of North Carolina.
In a July 31 deposition made public last weekend, the 50-year-old former senator admitted that she and Matthew Ammel slept together multiple times between May and October 2024 — including at an Airbnb in Napa, Calif.; while the two were in New York City for CNN anchor Jessica Dean’s wedding; in Sinema’s DC apartment; on a fundraising trip to Colorado; and at the senator’s Phoenix home.
At the height of the sexual affair, in June 2024, Sinema messaged Ammel on the encrypted app Signal: “I keep waking up during my sleep and reaching over for your arms to hold me.”
The bodyguard sent a screenshot of the exchange to Heather Ammel, who texted back in reference to Sinema: “She’s insidious. Yes, she might care about you and want to help you, but it’s to her own gain. This is a woman who is willing to break up a family … She’s a home wrecker [sic]. She knows you’re vulnerable and has taken advantage of that … She has you in her web now.”
Heather Ammel added to her then-husband: “I’m telling you if our marriage ends, and you continue this emotional affair (if not physical at this point) the girls will never forgive you … Please do not throw away our family that I love SO much for someone as selfish as she is.”
Heather Ammel testified Wednesday that she believed Sinema was “grooming” her husband, an Afghanistan War vet who had been struggling with depression, and claimed the Democrat-turned-independent “had her hook” in him.
“I felt completely powerless,” the mother-of-three said of the collapse of her marriage.
“It’s me against a United States senator who has power and money.”
On Oct. 3, 2024, one night after the tryst in Arizona, Sinema said she sent Matthew Ammel three Signal messages set to auto-delete after eight hours.
That’s when Heather apparently responded on Matthew’s phone.
Sinema testified Wednesday that she didn’t respond to the message, but had mistakenly stated in a prior deposition that it had been sent around Oct. 16, 2024, prompting Heather Ammel’s attorneys to seek to undermine her testimony.
Asked whether she was trying to conceal her affair with Ammel by using auto-deleting Signal messaging, Sinema said, “Absolutely not.”
Other Signal messages that Sinema and Heather Ammel both testified about in the hearing included a photo of the senator in a towel with cupping marks showing on her back.
Sinema said she did not view the messages as “enticing,” but the ex-wife disagreed, claiming the sultry snaps were meant to be flirty.
“Cupping bruises are very unattractive — so, no,” Sinema insisted when asked whether she was trying appeal to Matthew Ammel by sending the photo before they became sexually involved.
The proceedings had centered on a motion by Heather’s legal team, Thomas Van Camp and Mary Catherine Coltrane, to compel further testimony from Matthew Ammel.
US District Judge David A. Bragdon, an appointee of President Trump, ruled an additional deposition was allowed, so long as it was “limited” to questions about whether Matthew Ammel had reviewed any documents in preparation for an earlier interview.
Van Camp also subjected Sinema to tough questioning about the extent of her fling with Ammel, their communications over Signal, and alleged inconsistencies in the former senator’s statements about her relationship with Ammel made during a deposition.
Arguing for Sinema, Epstein argued that the case should be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, given that Sinema’s communications with Ammel in North Carolina only amounted to the single Oct. 3, 2024, message intercepted by his then-wife.
Sinema also testified to not know Ammel’s whereabouts when that message was sent, though he was with his wife in North Carolina at the time, nor that she knew the state of his marriage during their months-long affair.
Eight other Signal messages did not contain any romantic subtext, the attorney claimed, and seven were prior to the sexual relationship Sinema struck up with Ammel.
Matthew and Heather Ammel had been struggling in their marriage for most of 2024, according to other text messages between the couple revealed in Wednesday’s hearing.
Early on the morning of June 23, 2024, Matthew texted Heather: “I hate you. I don’t want to be married to you anymore.”
In a subsequent message, Sinema’s bodyguard told his wife: “You punched me in the head 3 times. I hate you.”
The following day, Matthew Ammel texted Heather the screenshot of Sinema’s Signal messages, leading Heather to call the senator “insidious.”
The husband and wife nearly came to blows during a fight in February 2024 after seeing a comedy show in Raleigh, and Heather Ammel admitted in court to having thrown a phone at her husband.
Heather also testified that she had confronted her husband about his relationship with Sinema as early as October 2023, after Matthew Ammel expressed discomfort with questions the senator asked him on a fundraising junket.
Sinema had allegedly gotten her bodyguard hooked on psychedelics to deal with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD after serving as special forces soldier, the ex-wife recounted.
“Ms. Sinema had gotten Matt out of a deep, dark hole of depression,” Heather conceded, noting that he had been “distant, aggressive, combative.”
Heather Ammel had still agreed to accompany her husband and Sinema to a U2 concert at The Sphere in Las Vegas in late 2023, in an attempt, she claimed, “to establish boundaries” with the senator.
The couple separated for around six months starting in November 2024 and their divorce was finalized in March of this year.
Bragdon said before concluding the hearing that he will issue a written opinion on the motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction in the future.
Both women left Wednesday’s hearing without taking The Post’s questions.
