Unlike his predecessors at Guantanamo,
Fred Borch and
Robert L. Swann, Davis has been a visible public figure. His statements have triggered controversy. Davis once said in an interview that he was asked to replace Borch at Guantanamo because of Borch's pushing of ethical bounds. On February 28, 2006, Davis spoke out again regarding the commissions, saying: Mori responded angrily, "Are they trying to intimidate me?" In it, Davis argued that the Guantánamo Bay detention center is humane, professional, and operating in compliance with international law.
Supreme court to hear challenges to the Military Commissions Act Congress authorized the military commission system under the
Military Commissions Act of 2006, to create an alternative to the existing federal and military system. It restricted detainees as
enemy combatants and those whose review was pending, to the military commission process; it prohibited their use of federal courts. The government stayed pending writs of habeas corpus. On June 29, 2007, the Supreme Court agreed to hear some outstanding claims of habeas corpus, opening up the possibility that they might overturn some or all of the Military Commissions Act. Davis called the Supreme Court's intention to review the MCA "meddling":
Resignation as Chief Prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay In October 2007, Colonel Davis resigned from his position as Chief Prosecutor. He had made the policy that evidence obtained from the use of
waterboarding, which he considered torture, would not be admissible as evidence in the military commissions. By this time, charges were being developed against high-value detainees, some of whom had been waterboarded in the custody of the CIA. Davis was overruled in his policy by his superiors, including
William J. Haynes, II, the General Counsel for the Department of Defense. Davis resigned in protest and transferred to become the Head of the Air Force Judiciary, stating, "The guy who said
waterboarding is A-okay I was not going to take orders from. I quit." He also charged that there was meddling from the Pentagon in cases, and claimed this presented serious conflicts of interest. Davis said he was denied an end-of-tour medal for his two years at Guantanamo because he resigned and later spoke out about problems in the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions. Davis stated about the medal denial, "I tell the truth, and I get labeled as having served dishonorably. I'm very concerned about the chilling effect ... on the process". Since his resignation, Davis has frequently spoken out against the Commissions. In 2008, Davis was called by the defense to testify in the military commission of
Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver, where he repeated his accusations of political interference. He said Pentagon interest in the progress of trials of detainees greatly increased after September 2006, when high-value detainees were transferred from the CIA to Guantanamo. Davis wrote: "The administration must choose. Either federal courts or military commissions, but not both, for the detainees that deserve to be prosecuted and punished for their past conduct."
Crimes of War Education Project Davis was Executive Director of the Crimes of War Education Project from 2010 to 2012. He was assistant professor at
Howard University School of Law from 2011 to 2015, teaching legal reasoning, research and writing, oral advocacy and national security law.
Administrative law judge Davis was an administrative law judge with the U.S. Department of Labor from 2015 to 2019, ruling on workers compensation cases involving issues from black lung disease to whistleblower cases, immigration visa appeals, child labor and other cases related to labor laws. In the summer of 2019 Davis ruled that a
Baltimore, Maryland–based subsidiary of
Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Enterprise RAC Company of Baltimore, had violated
United States labor law while contracting for the Federal government. In his decision he ordered the company to pay a $6.6 million
fine and offer other
restitution for
discrimination against
African Americans in its hiring, training, and promotion selections. In an article on the lawsuit that preceded the Department of Labor ruling,
The Baltimore Sun quoted an unnamed Enterprise company spokeswoman who contended that Enterprise had a "strong record of equal opportunity" in their hiring and employment practices and pointed to the company's recruitment outreach at
HBCUs.
2020 congressional campaign On November 17, 2019, Davis announced his congressional bid for
North Carolina's 11th congressional district held by Republican
Mark Meadows. Davis says he initially ran for Congress because he did not see a Democratic challenger running at the time that would beat Meadows. However, once Meadows dropped out of the race, he continued running because "I figured I’ve got 30-plus years of defending democracy, and just to sit back now and watch it go down the drain just wasn’t palatable." Davis lost the 2020 election to
Madison Cawthorn, 54.5% to 42.4%.
Endorsements Early endorsements for Davis came from progressive Democrats, legal scholars, and human rights activists.
Chris Lu, former
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor under the
Obama Administration pledged support, as did
Fletcher, North Carolina–based civil rights attorney
Frank Goldsmith,
Harvard Law School professor and
Constitutional Law expert
Laurence Tribe, and
Eugene R. Fidell, the Florence Rogatz Visiting Lecturer in Law at
Yale Law School. Davis was also endorsed by
VoteVets.org, which represents 700,000 progressive veterans; the Sierra Club; Equality NC and the AFL-CIO Western North Carolina Central Labor Council.
Political positions During his post-military career Davis has published numerous op-eds and other criticisms of the Guantanamo Military Commission process. Morris wrote: Think about that for a moment. If a professional football team was on its seventh head coach and sixth quarterback in less than a dozen years, that team would almost certainly be a loser. Davis tweeted a claim that he was blocked by
Donald Trump on Twitter prior to Trump's 2016 candidacy. Davis openly opposed Trump's actions during his presidency. He finds it appalling that Trump isolated the Kurds, and he believes that Trump was undermining all the hard work it took to build up US alliances. Moe Davis accused his former opponent Congressman Madison Cawthorn of sedition under US law: "I was Chief Prosecutor at Guantanamo for over 2 years and there’s far more evidence of Congressman Madison Cawthorn’s guilt than there was of guilt for 95+ percent of the detainees. It's time we start a domestic war on sedition by American terrorists."
2026 congressional campaign On May 5, 2025, Davis told
Smoky Mountain News that he would again run for Congress in North Carolina's 11th congressional district in 2026, challenging Republican incumbent
Chuck Edwards. ==Military awards==