U.S. Ambassador to Qatar Gets a New Boss: Qatar’s Ruling Family

Timmy Davis was probably America’s most enthusiastic supporter of Qatar during his 33 months as U.S. ambassador to the Middle Eastern country. “There is not anything that we do in the region that’s not enhanced by our relationship with Qatar,” Davis said in May at a conference in its capital city, Doha, just before leaving his diplomatic post. He didn’t say what he planned to do next.

The answer emerged last week—and it surprised even some people in Washington who are accustomed to the revolving door between government and the private sector. Irth Capital Management, an investment fund backed by Doha and whose co-founder and chairman is a member of Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family, said that Davis has joined the firm as president and partner.

Davis has no experience in finance or on Wall Street, according to his LinkedIn profile. What he does have is a track record of publicly supporting many of Qatar’s most controversial policies, such as their financial and diplomatic backing of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization that killed 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023. Davis also said that Qatar should be the focal point through which Washington engages the Middle East.

“Timmy Davis may be a smart, accomplished, and charming guy, but the reason he’s being hired is not because of those qualities,” said Matt Boyse, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, who spent over 35 years in the Foreign Service. “It’s likely because he has connections and relationships and knowledge that is of value to the Qatari royal family.”

“This is always a problem that we’re keeping a close eye on, in terms of undue foreign influence on U.S. policymaking,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, vice president of policy and government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. “Oftentimes, the mechanism through which a foreign entity might try to wield that influence is by dangling, or winking and nodding, to employment posts like being in government.”

Davis didn’t respond to requests for comment made through Irth, which has offices in Doha and New York, according to its website. Irth reportedly was part of a takeover offer this year for pizza chain Papa John’s International.

The Al Thanis view Davis, a former U.S. Marine who spent over 15 years in State Department posts around the world, as an important part of their efforts to expand Qatar’s financial reach.

“Timmy’s experience and strategic vision will be a tremendous asset as we continue building a global investment platform from Doha to the world,” Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulla Al Thani, Irth’s co-founder and chairman, wrote on X about Davis’s hiring.

State Department ethics rules dictate that former high-level diplomatic officials, including ambassadors, are subject to at least a one-year cooling-off period after their work for the U.S. government ends. That cooling-off period prohibits them from working on behalf of foreign governments to influence U.S. policy. But the ban doesn’t include companies such as Irth. Hedtler-Gaudette said that Davis’s new job is an example of a “big loophole” in the ethics rule book that is easily exploited.

Qatar has spent almost $100 billion over the past two decades to influence U.S. schools, universities, media, Congress, and even the White House itself, an investigation by The Free Press revealed in May. President Donald Trump’s attorney general, FBI director, chief of staff, and special Middle East envoy had lobbying, consulting, and financial deals with Qatari entities shortly before their current jobs. Robert Menendez, the former Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and New Jersey senator, began serving an 11-year prison sentence in June for taking bribes from Egyptian and Qatari interests.

Chase Untermeyer, the U.S. ambassador to Qatar from 2004 to 2007, was later founding chairman of the Qatar-America Institute, which was required to register as a foreign lobbying group under federal law. Untermeyer registered as a lobbyist in 2020 on behalf of the Embassy of Qatar, which paid him at least $15,000 a month to serve as an adviser, including by arranging trips for high-ranking Qatari officials and investments and donations from Qatari funds.

In 2022, Richard Olson, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, pleaded guilty to illegally lobbying on behalf of Qatar, including by accepting payments of up to $20,000 a month just after leaving his post in Pakistan. Olson also failed to disclose an $18,000 first-class plane ticket and a stay at a luxury London hotel.

“Every country tries to do what it can to wield influence and shape U.S. policy to its benefit,” said Hedtler-Gaudette of the Project on Government Oversight. “If you’ve got the resources the Gulf countries have, you’re just able to do it at a different level.”

Scrutiny of Qatar has surged since The Free Press’s May investigation. Qatar’s gift of a luxury Boeing 747-8 jet for use as Air Force One and then transfer to Trump’s presidential library deepened worries among Democrats and Republicans that the two countries are way too close for comfort.

Current and former U.S. officials told The Free Press that they believe Qatar could increase its lobbying and influence operations in Washington following Israel’s attack this month on Hamas’s political leadership in Doha. American and Middle East analysts had believed that the nearby Al Udeid Air Base—built and paid for by Qatar, and the Pentagon’s largest in the region—made Qatar essentially immune from such strikes. But the Israeli operation and an Iranian missile attack in June shattered that illusion.

Qatari and Trump administration officials have announced in recent days that they are discussing an enhanced security agreement that would further bind U.S. and Qatar military forces. The Israeli attack “expedites the need for a renewed strategic defense agreement between us and the United States,” said Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman.