Qatar’s prime minister and foreign affairs minister defended gifting US President Donald Trump a Boeing 272-8, claiming the jet is only a “government-to-government transaction” in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.
“This is a very simple government-to-government dealing,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani told CNN’s Becky Anderson, while adding that the matter was “still under legal review.”
“It is a government-to-government transaction,” Al-Thani said. “It has nothing to do with personnel, whether it’s on the US side or the Qatari side. It’s [the] Ministry of Defense and [the] Department of Defense. I don’t see any controversy.”
Al-Thani denied that the $400 million gift was to control or manipulate the US in any way, claiming instead that they would provide what the US needs as allies.
“Why would we buy an influence in the United States? If you look just in the last 10 years in the US-Qatar relationship. Qatar has been always there for the US, when it’s needed, whether it’s on the war against terror, whether it’s in the evacuation of Afghanistan, whether it’s on releasing hostages from different, different countries around the world,” Al-Thani said.
“We will not do anything illegal. If there something illegal here, there would be many ways to hide these kind of transactions when will not be visible for the public. This is a very clear exchange that’s happening between two governments,” he added.
Multiple congressional Republicans expressed concerns on Tuesday about Trump's desire to accept the airplane from Qatar, with at least one noting that doing so could pose a security risk.
Trump said on Monday that it would be "stupid" for him to refuse Qatar's offer of the Boeing 747-8 airplane, which would be used as a new US Air Force One.
The aircraft eventually would be donated to Trump's presidential library.
Is it legal for Donald Trump to accept the plane from Qatar?
There are two provisions in the US Constitution that place restrictions on the president receiving an emolument, or gift, from foreign governments or federal or state governments.
One provision states that the US Congress must approve any gift from a "King, Prince, or foreign State" to an elected official in the United States. The other, referred to as the "domestic" emoluments clause, prohibits the president from receiving a gift beyond salary for the job.
Congress has expressly approved gifts from foreign governments in the past. In 1877, Congress accepted the Statue of Liberty as a gift from France.
The foreign emoluments clause did not bar President Barack Obama in 2009 from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, which included $1.4 million in cash, without congressional consent.
A memo from the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel determined the prize did not violate the Constitution because the Norwegian Nobel Committee is not a "King, Prince, or foreign State." Obama donated the money to charity.
Democratic members of Congress sued Trump in 2017 after his global businesses allegedly received payments from foreign governments, including when Kuwait hosted an event at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
That case was dismissed by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which said the 215 members of Congress lacked standing to sue as an institution because they did not comprise a majority. Republicans controlled both houses of Congress at the time, as they do now.
It might be possible for the plane to be accepted by the Department of Defense under a statute that was enacted in 1990 to govern contributions to defense programs.
The law allows the Secretary of Defense to accept contributions of money or property from individuals, foreign governments, and international organizations that could be put to use by the Air Force, which operates the president's plane.
Trump has said the plane would eventually be donated to his presidential library, a repository housing research materials from his administration. He said he has no plans to keep it for personal use after leaving office. It is unclear if such a donation would run afoul of the domestic emoluments clause, which prevents a president from accepting gifts beyond the salary for the job.