When word arrived that the United States officially adopted a luxury Boeing 747-8 aircraft from Qatar temporarily as Air Force One, Washington’s political and moral center was dealt a breathtaking blow. The Defense Department justified taking delivery, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell saying that the transfer was made in compliance with all federal regulations and procedures. But the instanter movement raised an alarm at both ends of politics, a query far out of the base plane of a “flying palace.”
The center of the tempest is the U.S. Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, which states that federal officials may not receive gifts from foreign nations on behalf of Congress. The authors wrote the clause to exclude foreign corruption and intrusion, and the clause has hardly been stretched this far. As one of the professors of constitutional law at Loyola Law School, Jessica Levinson, said, the case is “unprecedented.” The $200 million to $400 million plane would be one of the most expensive gifts ever bestowed on the U.S. government.
President Trump and his administration responded that the plane is being gifted to the Department of Defense, not him, and will be gifted later to his presidential library once he is out of office. However, ethics scholars, such as Richard Briffault of Columbia Law School, have noted that if the plane docks at Trump’s library, the line between a gift to the country and to him personally becomes moot, raising textbook issues regarding breaches of the Emoluments Clause.
The political pushback has been swift and severe. Democratic lawmakers like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ridiculed the move as “premium foreign influence with extra legroom.” Schumer went so far as to try to introduce legislation to prohibit any foreign plane from being used as Air Force One. Among Republicans, too, there is unease. Senator Josh Hawley would have preferred an American-made jet, but Senator Rand Paul flatly stated that he was a “No” to the acceptance and stated that “it doesn’t look good or smell good.” Even Trump supporters have been disappointed, fearing the move would be a bad precedent for foreign control of U.S. policy.
Security issues are as urgent as the ethical ones. The latest Air Force One planes are flying fortresses in everything except name, able to withstand a nuclear strike and equipped with the latest communications and defense technology. Squeezing the Qatari planes into these specifications is no easy task. The latest and most reliable estimates are that the process would take half a billion dollars or more and could take two years. It would be stripped to its skeleton, heavily cleaned for the tools of espionage, and fitted with secure communications equipment, defense countermeasures, and in-flight refueling capacity—a feature of paramount importance in the case of a national emergency.
Stacie Pettyjohn, the director for the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, said Air Force One is a keystone in the U.S. command and control nuclear structure, and any weakness can have explosive consequences. Now, former Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center William Evanina cautioned that it would take years to remove and pull apart the aircraft for surveillance gear, and the airplane at best would be a “gracious presidential museum piece.”
The Qatar plane scandal is but the latest in a string. It’s one version of a pervasive trend of imprecision between self- and public interest that has marked the recent past. As Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice explains, past presidents have pushed the ethical limits, but the overt trading of cash and goodies to the officeholder as an individual is novel. Trump’s Gulf business, from his recent Saudi Arabian and Qatari property deals, only serves to exacerbate the issue and create conflict-of-interest questions. Historically, the focus of groups like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, such participation is characterized as damaging the public trust and subjecting the country to foreign influence.
The stakes in this moment are great. It undermines the checks for centuries in place between the presidency and foreign entanglement and self-enrichment. Foreign bribes and undue influence were what the founders most feared. Their warnings resound almost prophetic under these circumstances. As Congress and the judiciary wrestle with the limits of presidential powers and the enforcement of constitutional standards, the Qatar jet scandal is a stark reminder that no one crosses the line between national interest and personal interest. Conversely, the issue will be contentious, and its outcome will determine the destiny of the American presidency as well as the democratic character of the country for generations to come.