The news comes as President Donald Trump embarks on his first major foreign trip, which includes a stop in Doha, Qatar.
Given the massive value of a Boeing 747-8, the move is unprecedented and raises substantial ethical and legal questions. A Qatari official said the plane is technically being gifted from the Qatari Ministry of Defence to the Pentagon, describing it more as a government-to-government transaction instead of a personal one. The Defence Department will then retrofit the plane for the president’s use with security features and modifications.
News raises ethics questions
The news comes as government watchdog groups have bristled at how publicly the president is flaunting the norms of the office.
Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the potential move is a sharp departure from the playbook presidents have followed to ensure they stay in line with the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, which bans foreign payments to a sitting US president.
“We’ve never seen something on the level of a $400 million ($625 million) plane,” he said.
“It is a scale well beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.”
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at Washington University School of Law in St Louis, said that the Trump administration is “structuring a transaction to try to avoid the obvious application of the law” and that because Congress has not consented to the gift, it violates the clause.
“It is ridiculous. It’s a gift to Trump. The federal government is a pass-through,” Clark added.
During Trump’s first term, legal disputes arose concerning whether he had violated the emoluments clause by illegally profiting from his business ventures while in public office, Clark noted.
In 2021, the Supreme Court dismissed the cases against Trump because he was no longer in office.
“Trump thinks he will get away with this $400 million payoff from Qatar because he got away with multiple emoluments clause violations in his first term, and neither Congress nor the court would enforce the Constitution’s anti-corruption clause,” Clark said.
Boeing’s Air Force One woes
Replacing the Air Force One aircraft has long been a priority for Trump.
Boeing has been working toward renovating two 747 jets into next-generation Air Force One aircraft, but the process has been wracked by delays.
The planes had been scheduled to be delivered by 2022 and now aren’t expected until at least 2027.
Cheung said earlier this year that Trump’s tour of the plane in Palm Beach “highlights the project’s failure to deliver a new Air Force One on time as promised, as they are already five years late”.
Boeing’s $3.9 billion contract to replace the two Air Force One jets has become an expensive and embarrassing albatross.
The company has already reported losses totalling $2.5 billion already on the program, known as VC-25B, since it agreed to be responsible for what has become soaring cost overruns.
The two jets currently in use, which have the code letters VC-25A and carry the Air Force One designation when the president is on board, have been in service for nearly 35 years, starting during the term of President George H.W. Bush.
Trump has been deeply frustrated by the delays in replacing the aircraft, at at one point tapping Elon Musk to help accelerate the process.
“I’m not happy with the fact that it’s taken so long,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One in February.
“There’s no excuse for it.”
He said he wouldn’t turn to Boeing’s European rival, Airbus, but would consider buying a used 747 and having a different company refurbish it for use as Air Force One.
The challenge is not the basic jet, but what it takes to turn a run-of-the-mill Boeing 747 into the flying communications and command post fit for the president of the United States, Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace consulting firm, previously told CNN.
They are supposed to be able to protect its occupants from missile attacks or even the shock waves of a nuclear blast.
“You can have a jet anytime,” he said.
“But it takes a great deal of work to have encrypted communications and manage the military and federal government from anywhere around the world in any circumstance.”
