Former senator Kyrsten Sinema’s former bodyguard and lover said he caused $200,000 in damage to her Arizona home during a rampage because he believed she had abandoned her principles and aligned herself with the military-industrial complex.
Matthew Ammel, 39, was alone inside Sinema’s $2 million property in Cave Creek, a Phoenix suburb, on August 30 when he threatened to throw one of her paintings into the swimming pool every 10 minutes unless she posted a video to her X account.
When Sinema refused, Ammel threw 22 paintings into the pool, according to court records. He also smashed bottles of expensive liquor, broke a mirror and scattered glass throughout the house.
The seven-minute video, recorded during Ammel’s first deployment to Iraq in 2007, shows soldiers treating a bloodied man they had shot before placing him aboard a helicopter, Ammel told The Arizona Republic.
He said he wanted Sinema to share the footage because she “works for some of the companies that financially benefit from the genocide in Gaza and the current war we’re losing in Iran.”
Sinema, 50, served one Senate term from 2019 to 2025 before joining Hogan Lovells as a senior adviser. Ammel became part of her security detail in 2022 and later moved to her staff. The two began an affair in 2024.
Ammel said he felt like “arm candy” while accompanying Sinema to events associated with AI defense contractor Palantir, a British American Tobacco board dinner and the wedding of CNN anchor Jessica Dean.
“I was pissed at the system and I took it out on her art,” Ammel told The Republic. “The American people have no idea how [expletive] up our government is and, like, what our politicians spend their time doing.”
Court records show that Ammel’s case has been sent to a grand jury. He is due to be arraigned on Thursday, and his trial is scheduled for February 25, 2027.
Kyrsten Sinema walks through the Hart Senate Office Building in April 2023.
“The same news channels and politicians championing war now were calling us terrorists and racists for our behavior during this time period,” Ammel said. “None of this makes sense. That’s what I was angry about.”
Ammel’s case has been referred to a grand jury, court records show. He is expected to be arraigned on Thursday, with a trial set for February 25, 2027.
Our News Outlet has contacted his attorney, Kathryn Walter, for comment.
Ammel’s 14-year marriage ended during the affair. Since March, he had been working as a cowboy at a California National Guard base while continuing to travel back to Arizona.
He said Sinema encouraged him to return home after he became ill.
The former Green Beret said he had been trying to end his relationship with Sinema and accused her of becoming involved in his custody dispute with his ex-wife.
Ammel said the hearing, which Sinema helped him prepare for alongside his lawyer and psychiatrist, went badly.
“When I tried to talk to her about it, she abandoned me,” Ammel told The Republic.
Heather Ammel leaves a court in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on August 19.
Sinema attends a hearing in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on August 19.
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Sinema decamped to friends’ homes and hotels, according to Ammel, and he admitted he had been drinking when he trashed the house two weeks later.
His final trip to Washington with Sinema, to attend an event for Palantir CEO Alex Karp, felt like a ‘genocide celebration’ of the Gaza war, Ammel said.
‘Kyrsten was there rubbing elbows with Trump’s personal lawyer and, like, it was legitimately the most insane thing I had ever seen,’ Ammel told the Republic.
Our News Outlet has contacted Sinema and Palantir to ask whether she has a business relationship with the firm.
Karp and other Palantir staff donated thousands to her campaign in 2022 and 2023, records show, and she returned some when she bowed out of the 2024 race.
‘She would talk about how she would take bad people’s money and use it for good, but like at some point, I didn’t see her doing good anymore. She was just doing the bad,’ Ammel told the Republic.
Sinema also founded the Arizona Business Roundtable, launched an AI center at Arizona State University with OpenAI and lobbied for a failed data center in Chandler.
Ammel met Sinema through Tulsi Gabbard, whose sister ran the senator’s security detail when he joined it. The pair bonded over his use of psychedelics to treat PTSD on a two-hour drive, he said.
Ammel’s ex-wife Heather is suing Sinema under North Carolina’s ‘homewrecker’ law, accusing the former Democratic lawmaker of wrecking their marriage. Sinema admits the affair.
Sinema testified the relationship turned sexual on a trip to Napa on May 27, 2024, months after she said she would not seek reelection.
She said later encounters took place in New York, Washington, Colorado and Arizona.
Heather claims her husband told her Sinema got ‘handsy’ at a Tempe music festival, and that Sinema asked him to bring MDMA on a 2023 work trip to ‘guide him through a psychedelic experience.’
Ammel disputed his ex-wife’s testimony that Sinema used her clout as his boss to take advantage of him.
‘Kyrsten didn’t take advantage of me,’ he told the Republic. ‘She was nice to me.’
He was arrested on September 17 after two weeks in and out of psychiatric care, which at one point felt ‘like a Nazi experiment,’ he said.
He was accused in 2025 of strangling health care workers while committed in North Carolina, the Republic reported.
Ammel said he has been living in hotels in Maricopa County and learned they had broken up from a petition to have him hospitalized, which called Sinema his ex-girlfriend.
‘I had a dumb job, but I’m not dumb. Or crazy, I’m just sick of the system. I want to see my kids and my dog Scout and go back in the Army,’ Ammel told the Republic.
Sinema quit the Democratic Party to become an independent during her single Senate term. The first openly bisexual senator, Sinema became known on Capitol Hill for her bright outfits and wigs, and for an unlikely friendship with Republican Mitt Romney.
