The Trump administration plans to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane as a donation from the Qatari royal family that will be upgraded to serve as Air Force One, which would make it one of the biggest foreign gifts ever received by the U.S. government, several American officials with knowledge of the matter said.
The plane would then be donated to President Trump’s presidential library when he leaves office, two senior officials said. Such a gift raises the possibility that Mr. Trump would have use of the plane even after his presidency ends.
Mr. Trump confirmed the fact that he anticipates receiving the plane in a post on social media on Sunday evening, after a day of controversy in which even some Republicans privately questioned the wisdom of the plan. Mr. Trump suggested that Democrats were “losers” for questioning the ethics of the move.
“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,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!!”
While a Qatari official described the proposal as still under discussion and the White House said that gifts it accepted would be done in full compliance with the law, Democratic lawmakers and good government groups expressed outrage over the substantial ethical issues the plan presented. They cited the intersection of Mr. Trump’s official duties with his business interests in the Middle East, the immense value of the lavishly appointed plane and the assumption that Mr. Trump would have use of it after leaving office. Sold new, a commercial Boeing 747-8 costs in the range of $400 million.
“Even in a presidency defined by grift, this move is shocking,” said Robert Weissman, a co-president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization. “It makes clear that U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump is up for sale.”
Mr. Trump’s own private plane, known as “Trump Force One,” is an older 757 jet that first flew in the early 1990s and was then used by the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Mr. Trump bought it in 2011. The Qatari jet, if Mr. Trump continued flying it after leaving office, would give him a substantially newer plane for his own use.
ABC News reported Sunday morning that the gift of the plane was to be announced in the coming days as Mr. Trump made the first extended foreign trip of his presidency to three nations in the Middle East, including Qatar. The plan would fulfill the president’s desire for a new Air Force One after repeated delays involving a government contract to Boeing for two new jets to serve that purpose.
In a statement, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said: “Any gift given by a foreign government is always accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws. President Trump’s administration is committed to full transparency.”
An agreement for the government to accept the luxury aircraft and ultimately pass it along to Mr. Trump’s library would be the clearest example yet of how he has further intertwined his personal and presidential business in his second term. While Mr. Trump faced criticism during his first term for the way his properties collected money from the government, the last four months have included a flurry of deals around a cryptocurrency firm that has erased centuries-old presidential norms.
While two senior U.S. officials said the plane would be accepted as a gift for use by the government, Ali Al-Ansari, a spokesman for the Qatari government, said that reports of the plane being offered “during the upcoming visit of President Trump are inaccurate.”
He added, “The possible transfer of an aircraft for temporary use as Air Force One is currently under consideration between Qatar’s Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Department of Defense, but the matter remains under review by the respective legal departments, and no decision has been made.”
A White House official echoed that the plane would not be presented or accepted this week. The Justice Department and the Defense Department did not comment.
Mr. Trump toured the Qatari-owned 747, which is just over a decade old, while it was parked at Palm Beach International Airport in February. The New York Times reported then that the jet was being considered as a possible new Air Force One.
One senior U.S. government official said that the Defense Department had determined it could accept the plane. Two people familiar with the language of an analysis conducted by the office of the White House counsel, David Warrington, and the attorney general, Pam Bondi, whose past work as a lobbyist included Qatar as a client, said they had determined it would fall within the law for Mr. Trump’s library to receive the plane. The two people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that have yet to be publicly announced.
The plane that would be donated by Qatar is expected to be retrofitted by a military contractor called L3Harris, in Texas, and that work can begin once the government approves how the plane is being acquired, one of the senior officials said. Assuming the transfer of the plane goes forward, it is expected to be finished being equipped with military capabilities by the end of the year, the official added, allowing Mr. Trump to use it while in office.
The status of the expected contract with L3Harris was not immediately clear.
A Defense Department official said on Sunday that the Air Force has not yet reached any agreement on a contract to refurbish the Qatari 747 to make the security upgrades and modifications necessary for an AF1, and the Air Force could not legally do so until it actually took ownership of the plane.
Assuming that happens, the official said, it would still take an extended period of time to complete the contract and, more important, to make the actual modifications to match a full Air Force One upgrade.
“We’re talking years, not months,” the Defense Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details about a future Air Force One.
Others with knowledge of the project have suggested that the Qatari plane could be a more modified version of an Air Force One, and therefore could be built out faster.
Since shortly after his election, Mr. Trump has been frustrated with the budget overruns and delays with the two new Air Force One planes that Boeing is on contract to deliver to the federal government. The two current Air Force Ones are more than 30 years old and need frequent servicing, sometimes taking months.
Mr. Trump renegotiated the contract for the planes in his first term, and has wanted to fly on them while in office now.
Throughout the White House, officials have repeatedly complained about the Boeing delays.
Mr. Trump asked Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of SpaceX, to find ways to accelerate the planes’ delivery. Mr. Musk had insisted that one of the planes could be delivered in a year’s time.
One option that company officials and Mr. Musk had discussed was lowering security clearance requirements for those working on parts of the plane that do not relate to the most secure parts of an Air Force One jet. It is unclear where those talks led.
Some involved in developing a plane that could survive the fallout of a nuclear attack as well as avoid some missile attacks have said that Mr. Musk’s projected time frame is unrealistic.
But the Trump administration considered acquiring a Qatari-owned plane as a potential alternative to waiting for the two other Boeing jets, and a possible motivator for the company to move faster.
The model that the government is using for addressing the ethical issues raised by the donation, one of the officials said, is the one followed by President Ronald Reagan’s presidential library when it received the Air Force One he had flown on after it was retired from use. But at the time, Mr. Reagan did not use the plane to fly around. It was set up in the museum portion of his library.
Another person with knowledge of the effort to acquire the plane said that the Qataris had initially discussed donating it immediately to the Trump library, and Mr. Trump would then use it while in office. But government lawyers said that would violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution, the person said, which prohibits federal officials from accepting financial benefits from foreign governments without congressional approval.
The plan, if it goes through, is almost certain to revive those concerns. In 2021, the Supreme Court declined to adjudicate similar questions. That January, it vacated lower court rulings in cases accusing Mr. Trump of violating the clause in his first term, as he was no longer in office.
A spokesman for the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sued him over what it described as violations of the emoluments clause during his first term, said the president’s acceptance of the plane would raise a range of ethical issues far beyond whether it violated the Constitution, in part because he may continue using it after leaving office.
“It’s hard to see it as a coincidence when Trump’s company just announced a new golf resort in Qatar, reportedly partnered with a company owned by the country’s government, and will soon be meeting with senior Qatari officials in a Middle East trip that also features meetings with heads of state of two other countries he has property developments in,” the spokesman, Jordan Libowitz, said in a statement.
“At this point, it’s impossible to tell the difference between decisions being made by the White House for the good of the country and for the good of the Trump Organization,” he added.
The reported deal also drew fierce criticism from Democrats.
Senator Adam B. Schiff of California, who as a House member led the first impeachment case against Mr. Trump, assailed the plan. “The corruption is brazen,” Mr. Schiff wrote on social media.
Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland criticized the gift on social media, saying the president must first seek Congress’s consent.
“The Constitution is perfectly clear: no present ‘of any kind whatever’ from a foreign state without Congressional permission,” he wrote.
Erica L. Green and Michael Gold contributed reporting from Washington.
