[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 98 (Monday, June 9, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3279-S3281]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Air Force One
Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, the U.S. Constitution and the American
people give the American President vast power: the power to decide how
billions of dollars are spent; the power to oversee the entire Federal
criminal justice system; the power to sell arms around the world, to
deploy millions of American soldiers, to negotiate peace treaties.
We give him these powers--the Constitution gives the President these
powers--so that he uses them on our behalf, to deploy that vast power
of the American Presidency to increase our quality of life, to protect
the American people. We place immense trust in the President not to
abuse these incredible authorities that are given to him.
But Donald Trump is abusing that authority in ways that, honestly,
shock the conscience. Donald Trump is using the power of his office not
to help or protect us but to enrich himself and his family. He is doing
it publicly, brazenly, out in the open. He is, in effect, daring us--
specifically, daring the legislative branch, the coequal branch--to
stop him.
Nearly 3 weeks ago, news broke that the White House had dialed up one
of our key allies in the Middle East, the Government of Qatar, and it
asked that the Qataris give the President a luxury jet that is
reportedly worth upward of $400 million.
Now, the nicest jet that I have ever been on is Air Force One, and it
is really nice. But the jet that Trump wants to make Air Force One--
that he is asking for from the Qataris--makes Air Force One, the
current version, look like a tenement house. The Qatari jet that he is
asking for, its interior is designed by a famed French designer,
complete with a flowing grand staircase, sculpted ceilings, plush
carpeting, leather couches, and gold furnishings. The plane has been
called the world's most luxurious private jet. It includes nine
bathrooms, five kitchens, swanky lounges, and a master bedroom suite.
The arrangement that Trump proposed to the Qataris would briefly pass
the jet through U.S. Government hands--but only, as reported, for just
a year or two--before it would end up belonging personally to Donald
Trump. The U.S. Government would essentially be a straw purchaser. The
real owner of the jet, for all practical purposes, would be Donald
Trump.
Now, this kind of gift, a $400 million luxury jet, has no precedent
in American history. No President has ever asked for--never mind been
given--a $400 million gift from a foreign nation. Why? Well, because
Presidents know that that is crossing a line; that is a massive abuse
of their power.
The leverage that Presidents have over other countries that they
could use to ask for millions of dollars in gifts, it is supposed to be
used to benefit the Nation's security, not to enrich themselves. But,
also, it is just illegal. There is a very specific clause in the
Constitution that forbids this kind of gift from a foreign government
to a President, and this body is supposed to be in charge of helping to
enforce the Constitution. Our Founders wrote that clause into the
Constitution because they worried about this exact situation, where a
President is using his authority, like a Monarch or a King, to make
himself the richest person in the world.
Now, the Qatari Government feels like it had little choice but to say
yes when asked for this $400 million gift--again, briefly to the U.S.
Government but really, for all practical purposes, to the President.
They felt like they had no choice precisely because an American
President has so much power; they have so much leverage, especially
over a vulnerable country in the Middle East.
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In this case, Qatar really needs to keep the United States on its
side. Middle East politics, they shift really quickly, and during
Trump's first term, when the Qataris were not close to Trump, they paid
a price. They found themselves badly and dangerously isolated in the
region. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, if you remember, effectively ganged
up to blockade Qatar, and Trump gave that move implicit consent.
So Qatar, frankly, is willing to pay a very high price to avoid that
fate again. But Qatar also has things that it wants from the United
States. No Middle East country has ever been allowed to buy MQ-9 Reaper
drones. These are the most lethal armed drones that America makes. We
have previously judged that the region is just too volatile to allow
any nation to possess the Reaper, and, arguably, there is an arms
controls regime that doesn't allow us to transfer that technology.
But Qatar wanted to break that precedent. Of course, they did. They
wanted to be the first nation to have the Reaper technology, and Trump
seemed willing to go along. So a $400 million gift to the President--
again, that the President was asking for--is a relatively small price
to pay for that kind of military edge over your rivals in the region.
But there was one more reason that Qatar had no choice but to give
Trump--or, at least, they felt they had no choice but to give Trump--
this wildly illegal gift: because Trump had made it clear to the whole
region, to the whole of the Gulf region in the Middle East, that he was
for sale and that preferential American treatment was for sale and that
if Qatar didn't pay, another country would.
Qatar wasn't going to be protected, frankly, by a collective refusal
of Trump's extortion in the region, and they had only to look next door
to the United Arab Emirates to see how high the price was getting to
win Trump's affection. At the exact moment that Trump was leaning on
Qatar to give him the luxury plane, he was also leaning on UAE to give
him not a $400 million gift but a $2 billion gift.
And he didn't have to lean hard. Just before the Qataris committed to
give Trump the plane, an investment firm backed by the Emirati
Government and chaired by the Emirati Government's National Security
Advisor shocked the world and announced that it would use Trump's brand
new stablecoin--this is a form of cryptocurrency--in a $2 billion
investment deal that this investment fund, essentially an arm of the
UAE Government, was doing. And because of that $2 billion deal,
overnight Trump's stablecoin became one of the five largest stablecoins
in the world--massively inflating the President's wealth due to this
one single investment.
Now, this wasn't an ordinary investment decision. Out of all of the
stablecoin companies in the world, the Emiratis chose what, at the
time, was a brandnew, relatively small crypto company run by two people
who had very little background in the industry. Why? To put money
directly into the pocket of Donald Trump.
On the website of World Liberty Financial--that is the company that
is issuing the Trump coin--they don't hide the fact that this isn't the
Trump kids that own the business.
On the website it states, 60 percent of this company, World Liberty
Financial, is owned by an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump.
But it gets even more corrupt because World Liberty Financial's other
cofounder is a guy named Zach Witkoff, who, not coincidentally, is the
son of Steve Witkoff, Trump's top Middle East adviser. The Trumps could
have picked anybody in the world to run his stablecoin business with,
but they chose the son of the Middle East envoy just so that when they
were going around asking for money in the region, it was crystal clear
that if you were doing business with World Liberty Financial, you were
doing business with the people in the Trump administration who make all
the decisions about the Middle East.
So in one fell swoop, the Emiratis can put money into the family that
controls the White House and the family that deploys and decides Middle
East policy.
Now, just like the Qataris, the Emiratis want something in return
too. Their ask was for the United States to remove restrictions on
selling the most advanced American-made computer chips to the UAE. The
restrictions have been in place under Republican and Democratic
administrations for a really good reason: The UAE has a very close--too
close--relationship with China, and the United States has always,
rightly, worried that if we gave advanced technology to UAE, it would
pretty quickly potentially fall into the hands of the Chinese. Now,
this would be very bad, especially regarding these microchips--these
computer chips--because these chips power the most advanced and
proprietary American AI systems. Losing these chips to China could cost
us the lead to China on the global AI race.
The UAE also wanted the United States to look the other way while
they helped fund a death-spiral civil war in Sudan. The UAE is the main
supplier of weapons to the worst of the two parties that are involved
in the brutal, catastrophic, deadly civil war in Sudan.
And they want the United States to keep giving them weapons--most
recently asking for a resupply of Chinook helicopters, even as they use
their military prowess to destroy Sudan.
The end of this chapter of the story will not shock you. In
coordination with the $400 million luxury plane and the $2 billion
investment in Trump crypto, Qatar got signoff on buying the Reaper
drones, and Steve Witkoff--father of the co-owner of World Liberty
Financial--marched over to UAE right before the President was showing
up himself and announced that the United States would, in fact,
magically, lift those restrictions on the microchips. And just as
unsurprisingly, Trump announced he will sell the Chinooks to Abu Dhabi,
with no requirement that they stop fueling the war in Sudan.
The blatant exchange of U.S. national security secrets, our most
sensitive drone technology, and our most sensitive chip technology in
exchange for cash into Donald Trump's pocket is perhaps the most
brazenly corrupt act in the history of the American Presidency, and we
cannot normalize it just because he is doing it out in the open in
public.
The Senate--the Senate--which is given the responsibility by the
Constitution to be a coequal branch with the President--we have
independent responsibility to uphold and protect the Constitution to
set American foreign policy. We cannot pretend this is not happening.
We cannot look the other way while the entire moral foundation of our
foreign policy is being shattered.
Republicans can't ignore this just because the President is their
party's leader. We have that independent obligation to protect the
Constitution, which clearly says that these gifts are illegal, whether
they are going to a Democratic President or a Republican President.
We have a responsibility to our taxpayers to stop a President from
immorally enriching himself using the power we give him to help himself
instead of helping us.
What makes this moment so dangerous is that both UAE and Qatar--
especially Qatar--are key partners of the United States. They aren't
our adversaries. They are our allies. They are imperfect allies, but
they are our allies.
In fact, I have been down on this floor in the past arguing on behalf
of Qatar and the United States-Qatar relationship when other Senators
have tried to denigrate the Qataris' contributions to regional peace.
The Qataris have been a critical partner on so many important issues.
It is worth saying that.
There is no way that we would have been able to evacuate 124,000
people from Afghanistan on the eve of the Taliban takeover without
Qatar's help. The Qataris today host thousands of U.S. troops at Al
Udeid Air Force Base, the largest base in the region.
The Qataris are critical mediators who have helped us send back-
channel messages to secure the release of American hostages or
negotiate peace deals. There is no question that Qatar is a country
that helps stabilize the region and often is indispensable in
protecting U.S. interests overseas.
So I want to cultivate and strengthen that important relationship. I
honor the work the United States and the UAE do all around the region
to try to
[[Page S3281]]
track down and hold accountable terrorists. These are real
partnerships.
But our relationship with Qatar and the UAE, it can't be a corrupt
relationship. We can't sell drones to Qatar--our friend--if our friend
is willing to take part in Trump's corruption. We cannot sell weapons
to the UAE--our ally--if our ally is willing to take part in Trump's
corruption.
We will have a chance this week to make this clear; that the U.S.
Senate will not facilitate--will not grease the wheels of Trump's
corruption of our foreign policy.
We can do that by voting to block these two arms sales to Qatar and
to the UAE--not permanently but until both countries commit to deny
Trump's requests for personal enrichment as part of the bilateral
relationship.
That is why Senators Van Hollen, Kaine, Schatz, and Sanders have
joined me in two resolutions of disapproval for those Reaper drone
sales and the Chinook sale, and we will have a vote on these two
resolutions as early as this week.
President Trump has declared that U.S. foreign policy is for sale,
and the opening bids from two of the richest nations in the world is a
$2 billion investment in Trump's crypto company from the UAE and a $400
million luxury plane essentially for the President's permanent personal
use.
At the exact same moment that Trump is trying to push a bill through
this Congress that is going to ruin a lot of people's lives--cutting
off their healthcare or leaving kids without food at night--he is
making himself even richer by trading American national security policy
for gifts and, to make it worse, trading away U.S. national security
secrets in exchange.
The net result is an American public that is poorer and weaker and
less secure and a President who is richer. It is corrupt. It is
corrupt. We have never ever in the history of this country allowed for
a President to do this. Never in the 250 years that our Republic has
been on the Earth has a President ever asked another nation to enrich
himself in this way in exchange for preferential treatment from the
U.S. taxpayers.
If you are Republican or Democratic Senator, you have to see this as
unprecedented, as terrible for our Nation, as corruption. American
foreign policy should not be for sale. If we let these arms sales go
through, we are greasing the wheels of that corruption. If we vote for
these resolutions of disapproval, at least we have a shot to stop it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.