Texas Couple Who Backed Trump Now Face Wife’s Deportation and a Family Split

Matthew Ammel, the former bodyguard who became Kyrsten Sinema’s lover, says he wrecked her Arizona home on August 30 because he believed she had sold out to the military industrial complex. Ammel, 39, told The Arizona Republic he was angry about her ties to companies he says profit from the war in Gaza and the conflict with Iran. He faces a grand jury and is due to be arraigned Thursday. The damage to the $2 million house in Cave Creek, a Phoenix suburb, has been reported at $200,000.

What Happened at the Cave Creek Home

Ammel was alone at the house on August 30, court records show. He told Sinema he would throw one of her paintings into the pool every 10 minutes until she posted a video on her account on X. She refused.

Ammel then dumped 22 of her paintings into the pool, according to court records. He also threw expensive liquor bottles, smashed a mirror and left glass across the house. He admitted to the Republic that he had been drinking.

The video he wanted posted is seven minutes long and was filmed during his first deployment to Iraq in 2007. It shows soldiers treating a bloodied man they had shot before loading him onto a helicopter, Ammel said.

Why He Says He Did It

Ammel told the Republic that Sinema “works for some of the companies that financially benefit from the genocide in Gaza and the current war we’re losing in Iran.” Sinema left the Senate in 2025 after a single term that began in 2019. She has since joined the law firm Hogan Lovells as a senior adviser.

“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.”

He also pointed to his own record in the military. “The same news channels and politicians championing war now were calling us terrorists and racists for our behavior during this time period. [None] of this makes sense. That’s what I was angry about,” he said.

Ammel described feeling like “arm candy” at events with Sinema. They included gatherings linked to the defense technology firm Palantir, a British American Tobacco board dinner and the wedding of CNN anchor Jessica Dean.

His last trip to Washington with her was to an event for Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Ammel called it a “genocide celebration” of the Gaza war. “Kyrsten was there rubbing elbows with Trump’s personal lawyer and, like, it was legitimately the most insane thing I had ever seen,” he said.

Palantir has a financial link to Sinema’s political past. Karp and other Palantir staff donated thousands of dollars to her campaign in 2022 and 2023, records show. She returned some of it when she dropped out of the 2024 race. Neither Sinema nor Palantir has publicly commented on whether she has a business relationship with the firm.

Ammel said his view of her changed over time. “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,” he said.

Sinema’s own record includes founding the Arizona Business Roundtable, launching an AI center at Arizona State University with OpenAI and lobbying for a data center in Chandler that was never built.

How the Two Met, and the Affair

Ammel, a former Green Beret, joined Sinema’s security detail in 2022 and later moved onto her staff. He met her through Tulsi Gabbard, whose sister ran the senator’s security detail at the time. The two bonded on a two-hour drive over his use of psychedelics to treat PTSD, he said.

They began an affair in 2024. His 14-year marriage to Heather Ammel collapsed over it.

Heather is now suing Sinema under North Carolina’s “homewrecker” law, which lets a spouse sue over a marriage ended by an outside relationship. Sinema admits the affair. She testified that it became sexual on a trip to Napa on May 27, 2024, months after she said she would not seek reelection. She said later meetings took place in New York, Washington, Colorado and Arizona.

Heather testified that her husband told her Sinema got “handsy” at a music festival in Tempe. She also claims Sinema asked him to bring MDMA on a 2023 work trip to “guide him through a psychedelic experience.” Sinema has not been reported to have responded to those claims in the material reviewed here.

Ammel disputed his ex-wife’s testimony that Sinema used her power as his boss to take advantage of him. “Kyrsten didn’t take advantage of me,” he told the Republic. “She was nice to me.”

The Breakup and the Custody Fight

Ammel said he had been trying to end the relationship before August 30. He had worked as a cowboy at a California National Guard base since March but kept returning to Arizona. When he fell ill, he said, Sinema urged him to come home.

He accused her of taking over his custody fight with his ex-wife. A hearing she helped prepare for with his lawyer and psychiatrist went badly, Ammel said. “When I tried to talk to her about it, she abandoned me,” he told the Republic. Both Sinema and Heather Ammel were at a hearing in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on August 19.

Sinema then moved to friends’ homes and hotels, according to Ammel. About two weeks later, he wrecked the house.

Police arrested Ammel on September 17 after two weeks in and out of psychiatric care, which he said at one point felt “like a Nazi experiment.” The Republic also reported that he was accused in 2025 of strangling health care workers while committed in North Carolina. No outcome of that accusation appears in the reporting.

Ammel said he has lived in hotels in Maricopa County. He learned the relationship was over from a petition to have him hospitalized that described Sinema as his ex-girlfriend.

“I had a dumb job, but I’m not dumb. Or crazy, I’m just sick of the system,” he told the Republic. “I want to see my kids and my dog Scout and go back in the Army.”

What Happens Next

Ammel’s case has been sent to a grand jury, court records show. He is due to be arraigned Thursday, and a trial is set for February 25, 2027. His attorney, Kathryn Walter, has been contacted for comment. No response from Walter, Sinema or Palantir has been reported.

The Republic interview gives Ammel’s version of events only. Court records confirm the date, the paintings in the pool and the upcoming court dates. His reasons, his account of the relationship and his claims about Sinema’s work come from his own statements. Heather Ammel’s lawsuit against Sinema is a separate case that is still pending.

A private research group announced on Wednesday that new radar scans of the Durupınar Formation in Turkey’s Ağrı Province show a large man-made structure underground. Noah’s Ark Scans released a preliminary report claiming the 515-foot boat-shaped mound contains a “man-made object” with corridors, chambers and hallways, not solid natural rock. The findings have not been peer reviewed, and geologists have long described the site as a natural formation.

What the Radar Showed

The scans were run by Dr Khosrow Bakhtar, an engineer who spent decades building detection systems for US defense agencies, including the Air Force, Navy and NORAD. He used a system he invented, called BakhtarRadar, which was originally built to find buried tunnels and hidden structures. The team wanted to know whether the mound was solid natural rock or a built structure with rooms inside.

According to the report, the images showed repeating lines and angles, open passageways, corridors, chambers and hallway-like spaces running the length of the mound. Bakhtar said the images do not look like ordinary rock, mudflow or a solid natural hill in Turkey.

In a statement to the Daily Mail, Bakhtar said the radar is designed to screen out ordinary features such as rock and to pick up buried structures, open spaces and man-made materials. The complex patterns still appeared strongly, so the team concluded the object is not a natural geological formation.

“Natural ground does not organize itself into corridors, chambers and hallways,” Bakhtar said. “The system was built to separate buried structure from host geology, tunnels, voids, worked materials, discontinuities. That is what it is seeing here. A solid geological mass would not have returned this signature.”

He was careful about what the scans can and cannot say. “Whatever the object is beneath the surface is extraordinary,” he said. “In forty years of this work, I have never seen anything like it. It could be a ship. It could be a spaceship. What I can say from the radar is that it is organized, it is structural, and a solid geological mass would not have returned such a strong signature.”

Bakhtar did not say the structure is Noah’s Ark. He said it is organized and structural, and he left the question of what it is open.

Core Drilling Is Underway

Physical sampling began in late September 2026 under a Turkish university-led field program. The first holes hit a very hard layer about 12 to 15 feet down inside the formation. Those samples are being sent to outside labs for testing.

The team told the Daily Mail earlier that core drilling also found a layer rich in organic material. Researchers are testing it to see whether it contains decayed wood.

The full radar scan is expected to be finished by November 2026. More lab results will follow later.

The Next Test Is Animal DNA

The group ties the site to the Book of Genesis, where the flood story says a catastrophic flood destroyed life on earth. Some biblical chronologies place that flood more than 4,300 years ago. In Genesis 6:19-20, God tells Noah to bring male and female pairs of each kind of animal onto the ark so they could survive.

Noah’s Ark Scans says the next major step is testing for animal DNA inside the structure. The group is in talks with scientists who specialize in recovering and reconstructing ancient and extinct animal DNA from deteriorating material. That includes old bones, teeth and other remains buried for thousands of years.

Andrew Jones, vice president of the Noah’s Ark Research Project and founder of Noah’s Ark Scans, made the announcement on Wednesday. “We now know we are looking at a massive, 515-foot, boat-shaped man-made structure with organized patterns and corridors in the Mountains of Ararat, where Genesis places the Ark,” he said.

Jones also said what the group still has to prove. “The challenge is how we prove this is the vessel that preserved living creation through a catastrophic flood,” he said. “That proof will not come from another scan. It will come from identifying and confirming ancient animal DNA inside the voids Dr Bakhtar mapped inside the structure.”

That statement sets the standard the team has chosen for itself. By Jones’s own account, radar images alone will not settle the question.

A Site With a Long Dispute

A Turkish Army captain named İlhan Durupınar spotted the formation in an aerial photo in October 1959, during a NATO mapping mission, and the site later took his name. A group that surveyed it in September 1960 spent two days digging and dynamiting inside the boat-shaped formation and found only soil and rocks. WikipediaWikipedia

Geologists assert that the formation is entirely natural, though they have nominated it as geological heritage. The new claims challenge that view, but they rest on the group’s interpretation of data from its own radar system. No independent scientists have reviewed the report yet. wikipedia

Several results could change that. Lab tests on the hard layer and the organic layer could show whether the material is wood or rock. A finished radar scan would give the team a full map to compare against the preliminary images. Animal DNA, if any is found, would be the strongest evidence the group has named so far. Outside review of any of these results would decide whether the claim holds up.

What Happens Next

Noah’s Ark Scans says the radar shows a built structure with corridors and chambers inside a 515-foot mound in eastern Turkey. Dr Bakhtar says the signal is too organized for solid rock. Jones says proof that this is the ark has to come from DNA.

Until then, the open items are concrete. Lab results on the drilled samples are pending, the full radar scan is due in November 2026, and the DNA discussions have not produced a test. Each of those steps will show whether the preliminary report holds up.