Noted attorney Alan Dershowitz on Tuesday detailed two reasons President Donald Trump would probably be able to keep a 747 reportedly being gifted to the United States.
Qatar offered Trump the $400 million Boeing 747-8 for modification into a VC-25 configuration to serve as Air Force One, with the jet being donated to Trump’s presidential library after his term in office ends. Dershowitz, on “The Dershow,” noted that the Constitution’s “emoluments clause,” something cited by some critics, actually would not prohibit the gift to the United States government. (RELATED: Alan Dershowitz Predicts Judge’s Threat To Appoint Prosecutor Over Deportation Flights ‘Won’t Stand’)
“Okay, here’s what the Constitution says: No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States,” Dershowitz said. “In other words, we don’t have sirs and knights, or anything like that. So we can’t grant titles of nobility and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, that means the president, shall without the consent of Congress, and this is the key, without the consent of Congress, accept any present, emoluments, office or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign state. Now, obviously, Qatar has the king. Oh, I guess he’s the emir, doesn’t say emir, he’s the emir, I know, I met him three times, the emir of Qatar, I know he’s an emir and I guess he comes under the category of king, prince or foreign state.”
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Trump faced multiple lawsuits arguing that he violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause during his first term centering around hotels owned by his company. The suits were struck down by federal courts.
“Now this means no person shall receive the gift,” Dershowitz said. “We know that gifts are given to governments all the time… when you go to the Oval Office, where the White House, you see all over the place, gifts that have been given by foreign governments to the White House, great portraits of Winston Churchill and other things that are gifts the British government or other governments have been given to the United States. But when the incumbent president or any officer leaves, he doesn’t take the gifts with him, he leaves them. There have been a couple of occasions where the presidents of taken a few gifts, for example, letters they take letters now letters could be worth a fortune… I think presidents have taken some of those, but mostly they go to the Library of Congress or to the Smithsonian or to the presidential libraries.”
“Now presidential libraries are not the property of the president himself or of the former president,” Dershowitz continued. “They are the property of the Smithsonian Institute, the archives. They are the property of the United States of America, and so, if the emir of Qatar or the Qatari state gives the president of the United States a $400 million dollar airplane, that is not a violation of the emoluments clause, it’s perfectly constitutional.”
Dershowitz said that even if Trump were to keep the plane for his personal use, which would possibly make the plane a gift and thus conflict with the constitutional provision, critics of the gift still faced an additional hurdle beside the legal merits when it came to bringing the case in court. (RELATED: Alan Dershowitz Predicts Fate Of Trump’s Venezuelan Gangbanger Deportation Effort In Supreme Court)
“I don’t think anybody would have standing to challenge it,” Dershowitz said. “Who was harmed? Who’s hurt? Who gets to bring the lawsuit? Who’s John Doe? I’m John Doe. I make, you know, $150,000 a year and I pay taxes, and I don’t wanna see my president walk away with a $400 million jet. That’s an interesting political argument. I don’t think it would give anybody standing to raise that argument in court.”
“So all in all my legal conclusion, my constitutional conclusion is pretty much what Pam Bondi’s constitutional conclusion is: That is, there is no violation of the emoluments clause, certainly not if the plane, stays on the ground and is part of the library and is a tourist attraction,” Dershowtiz concluded.
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