By Katherine Tinsley
9:40am PDT, May 12, 2025
_
The Democratic Party published a press release stating the “lavishly outfitted Boeing 787 Dreamliner” was described as a “flying palace” previously owned by Qatar’s royal family.
“In what may be the most valuable gift ever extended to the United States from a foreign government, the Trump administration is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar,” ABC News reported.
_
New York congressman Ritchie Torres took to X to criticize Donald Trump for potentially accepting the item: “Air Force One will have something in common with Hamas. Paid for by Qatar,” Torres wrote on Sunday, May 11.
_
Ritchie Torres reportedly wrote a letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, acting Department of Defense Inspector General Steven Stebbins and acting director Jamieson Greer of the Office of Government Ethics pushing for an “immediate” ethics review to be conducted.
“The American people are witnessing, in real time, what can only be described as a ‘flying grift,'” Torres wrote.
_
Torres said the gift “flagrantly violates both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause.”
“That clause explicitly prohibits any person holding public office from accepting ‘any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State,'” he explained.
“No one — not even President Trump — is above the law, let alone the Constitution,” Torres added.
_
Donald Trump celebrated Qatar’s gift in a Truth Social post: “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,” Trump said on Sunday, May 11. “Anybody can do that!”
