Legal experts say the potential transaction raises thorny questions about the rules surrounding foreign gifts to sitting presidents.
President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to accept a $400 million Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar in a transaction that legal experts say raises thorny questions about the rules surrounding foreign gifts to sitting presidents.
“The Emoluments Clause suggests Congress must consent if this is a present from a foreign state,” says Dan Urman, director of the law and public policy minor at Northeastern University, who teaches courses on the Supreme Court.
The so-called Foreign Emoluments Clauses, provisions in the U.S. Constitution designed to curtail corruption, generally forbids officeholders from accepting gifts, emoluments (or benefits) or titles from foreign states without congressional approval.
Trump said on social media that the jet is a gift to the Defense Department. The administration was planning to retrofit the jet to be used as Air Force One during the president’s second term, according to CNN.
“So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane,” Trump posted on his social media site on Sunday night. “Anybody can do that!”
Reporting from ABC News notes that the plane “will be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation no later than Jan. 1, 2029, and any costs relating to its transfer will be paid for by the U.S. Air Force.”
Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokesperson, said: “Any gift given by a foreign government is always accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws.”
What if Trump wanted to keep the jetliner after he leaves office?
“If this is a government-to-government gift and Trump will not use it when he is no longer president, he’s on slightly more solid ground,” Urman says. “Then the gift is to the country, not Trump himself.”
Should the foundation receive the jet, it could be construed as a personal gift to Trump.
“The Reagan presidential library actually has in its possession a former Air Force One that was decommissioned,” Urman says. “But if Trump used the plane after leaving office, that’s a far cry from putting a plane on display in a presidential library.”
The court recently ducked an opportunity to clarify the nature and extent of the Emoluments Clauses in a case involving Trump’s hotels abroad. A Washington, D.C.-based watchdog sued Trump in 2017, claiming that he hadn’t divested from his companies in other parts of the world upon becoming president, and was therefore benefiting financially from guests and events at his hotels, leases in his buildings and lucrative real estate deals.
The Supreme Court ultimately declared the issue moot when Trump left office in 2021, leaving the constitutional provision unelaborated. Experts say it has largely never been applied in practice.
“One of the reasons it hasn’t been applied is that no prior president has ever dreamed of doing something like this,” says Jeremy R. Paul, a professor of law and former dean of the Northeastern University School of Law.
For Paul and Urman, the issue with potential violations of the Emoluments Clauses has been one of standing.
“This is another example of what I would describe as a culture of a war on rules,” he says. “He finds a way to argue that this is consistent with the letter of the law — even if it’s in violation of its spirit.”
“Could such a gift really come with no strings attached?” says Ravi Ramamurti, director of Northeastern’s Center for Emerging Markets and a university distinguished professor in international business and strategy. “What signal would this transaction send to other countries about the new norms for winning friends in the United States? You have to wonder what might come next.”