NEWPORT — A former Navy SEAL Commander and Sunapee resident is alleged to have cut down his neighbor’s trees last summer, according to two felony indictments against him.
Michael Hayes, 55, faces charges of criminal mischief and timber harvesting trespass, according to the indictments a Sullivan County Grand Jury returned on May 27.
Each felony charge carries a penalty of three and a half to seven years in prison and a $4,000 fine.
On Monday at the Hayes’ Sunapee residence on Lake Ave, which sits on the shore of Sunapee Harbor and is assessed at over $3 million according to town records, Hayes’ wife, Anita, declined to comment on the two felony indictments. She said her husband is on a trip “overseas.”
Hayes spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy SEALS, serving in South America, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, “including the conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan” and as a “Commander of a 2,000 person Special Operations Task Force,” according to his biography on the website of the 1162 Foundation, a nonprofit Hayes founded to support Gold Star Families.
He served as a White House fellow and worked in foreign policy with both the Bush and Obama administrations, the website says. An author of multiple books, he is also managing director at Insight Partners, a software investment firm with $90 billion of assets.
Anita Hayes suggested that the Valley News speak with the neighbors to the south, who live on an abutting lakeside property. They didn’t answer a knock at the door on Monday.
A voicemail left for Stacey Nath-Vinick, owner of the abutting property, was not immediately returned. Reached by phone, Michael Vinick, co-owner, declined to comment.
Efforts to reach the Sullivan County Attorney’s office were not immediately successful on Monday.
The indictments against Hayes stem from events in June 2025.
In the criminal mischief charge, the state alleges that Hayes caused damages in excess of $1,500 to the trees belonging to his neighbor.
The timber harvesting charge states that Hayes cut, felled, destroyed, injured, carried away or caused “to be cut, felled, destroyed, injured, or carried away, any tree, timber, log, wood, pole, underwood, or bark which is on the land of another person; or aid in such actions without the permission of that person or the person’s agent.”
Hayes is scheduled to be arraigned in Sullivan Superior Court in Newport on June 17 at 10 a.m.
