Does Qatar’s gift of a luxury plane to US violate the emoluments clause?
A 13-year-old private Boeing aircraft that President Donald Trump toured recently takes off from the Palm Beach International Airport on Feb. 16 in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Ben Curtis/The Associated Press)
Some Democratic lawmakers and ethics experts are raising concerns that a plan by Qatar, a country in the Middle East, to give a Boeing 747 jumbo jet worth about $400 million to the U.S. Department of Defense could be illegal and unconstitutional.
President Donald Trump said May 11 on Truth Social, his social media platform, the plane will temporarily replace Air Force One, which is at least three decades old. ABC News reported on the gift in a May 11 story.
The plane currently has three bedrooms and a private lounge, but it will be modified for security and safety. It will be given to the Defense Department and, when Trump leaves office, to Trump’s presidential library foundation, sources told ABC News. Trump has said he won’t use the plane after leaving office.
Lawyers in the White House counsel’s office and the Department of Justice have reportedly concluded that the transaction does not violate anti-bribery laws because it is not conditioned on official acts, according to ABC News. They have also reportedly concluded that the gift doesn’t violate the emoluments clause because the plane is being given to the United States, rather than Trump.
The emoluments clause states that, absent congressional consent, no one holding any office of profit or trust shall “accept of any present, emolument, office or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state.”
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York criticized the gift on social media.
“It’s not just bribery, it’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom,” he wrote.
Some experts interviewed by NPR, the Hill and the BBC have suggested that there would be an emoluments clause violation.
If the plane is transferred to Trump’s presidential library after he leaves office, “then it’s not really a gift to the United States at all,” said Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School, in an interview with NPR.
“It is certainly stretching the Constitution, and we have not seen a gift on this scale, or of this nature,” said Andrew Moran, a constitutional law expert and a professor at London Metropolitan University, in an interview with the BBC.
Two cases filed during the first Trump administration had claimed that Trump was violating the emoluments clauses by accepting payments to his businesses by foreign governments and states. After Trump left office, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the cases as moot and vacated appellate decisions against Trump.
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