Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.
Have you ever heard someone refer to an “emolument” in a context other than the U.S. Constitution? Probably not. The word is somewhat archaic, and rarely appears other than as a reference to a gift provided to a public official, especially the president. It came into its own during President Donald Trump’s first term, when Democrats accused him of violating the Constitution by accepting gifts from foreign powers, particularly in the form of paying high prices to stay in a Trump hotel.
Now the same president is once again front and center in an emolument discussion. In this case it’s a luxury plane worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which the U.S. Air Force accepted on May 21 as a gift from the Emirate of Qatar.
Merriam-Webster defines “emolument” as “the returns arising from office or employment usually in the form of compensation or perquisites.” The Constitution provides for pay to the president, to be determined by Congress. That’s an emolument. But in Article I, Section 9, the Constitution forbids the president, or any other public official, from accepting any foreign emolument on his own:
. . . no Person holding any Office or Trust under them [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
There’s a very good reason for that. Alexander Hamilton (who else?) cautioned in “The Federalist Papers”: “One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption.” The danger of corruption is all too apparent in a foreign power’s offer to give the U.S. president, or his government, a multimillion-dollar luxury airplane.
The offer of the plane could be portrayed in a couple of ways. Either it’s a gift to the U.S. Department of Defense, as Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani says, or it’s a gift to Trump himself. There are complications with both interpretations, in addition to the underlying suspicion that the offer is, at bottom, a bribe.
First: since the plane was transferred in a government-to-government transaction, Trump escapes the charge that he’s accepting a personal gift from a foreign head of state. But the luxury jet now becomes the property of the United States. Trump can’t take possession of it for his presidential library (which the White House has said will occur), or for any other purpose, when he leaves office.
It would almost certainly have to remain a U.S. property, to transport any president, Republican or Democrat. Otherwise it’s simply a deferred emolument, which U.S. courts should reject as a violation of Article I, Section 9.
Second: if Congress had given Trump permission to accept the plane as his own property, that also would have gotten him off the hook. (See, once again, Article I, Section 9.)
But given the avalanche of unfavorable publicity cascading from the offer, coupled with the narrow Republican margins in both houses of Congress, it was highly unlikely that Congress would have empowered Trump to accept the offer personally. Democrats unanimously oppose it, so virtually all the GOP members would have had to approve the gift. Even diehard MAGA lawmakers would have to think twice.
Air Force acceptance of the plane will still encounter stiff headwinds, both from Democrats and from Republicans of conscience and ethics. If Trump tries to expropriate it for his library after he leaves office, he will not be unchallenged.
Top photo was originally published on the White House Facebook page on May 14.