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, in possibly the biggest foreign gift ever received by the U.S. government, four people with knowledge of the matter said.
The plane will then be donated to President Trump’s presidential library when he leaves office, two senior officials said.
Democratic lawmakers and good government groups expressed concern over the conflicts the proposal presents. The plan raises substantial ethical issues, given the immense value of the lavishly appointed plane and Mr. Trump’s intention to use it after he leaves office. Sold new, a commercial Boeing 747-8 costs in the range of $400 million.
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.
The plan, reported earlier by ABC News, is expected to be announced in the coming days as Mr. Trump makes the first extended foreign trip of his presidency to three nations in the Middle East, including Qatar. The plan, which ABC News said had been approved by the White House counsel and the Justice Department, 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.
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.
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, 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 being 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. 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.
A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
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 offered to donate it immediately to the Trump library, and then have Mr. Trump 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 questions about whether Mr. Trump is in violation of the emoluments clause, which the Supreme Court declined to adjudicate in 2021. 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 has closely tracked Mr. Trump’s business dealings in the Middle East and 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.
“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 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. “Flying around on a $400 million gift from a country he’s doing business in just raises further questions about where his priorities lie.”
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, said the plane amounted to a “pretty clear” violation of the emoluments clause. “The corruption is brazen,” Mr. Schiff wrote on social media.
Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland criticized the gift, 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 said on social media. “A gift you use for four years and then deposit in your library is still a gift (and a grift).”
Erica L. Green and Michael Gold contributed reporting from Washington.
