U.S. defense officials confirm acceptance of Katari aircraft as Air Force
The United States has accepted aircraft intended to be a fleet of aircraft from the Qatar Air Force, a gift that has sparked criticism, including some of President Trump's biggest supporters.
“The Secretary of Defense has accepted the Boeing 747 from Qatar under all federal rules and regulations,” Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Wednesday.
The aircraft will need to be modified before it can be used as part of Air Force One – the president's formal mode of air transport.
The White House insists that the gift is legal, but the transfer announcement a week ago has caused great controversy.
The plane is a gift from the Qatar royal family and is estimated to be worth $400 million (£300 million). The White House said the new plane will be transferred to Trump's presidential library at the end of his term.
It will take years to fit in carrying other safety systems and upgrades needed by the president – including the ability to withstand electromagnetic pulses in a nuclear explosion and refuel in flight.
Mark Cancian, senior consultant to the Defense and Security division of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said the cost of such a transformation could easily cost $1 billion (£750 million).
“They gave us a gift,” Trump said a week ago. The president also said it was “stupid” to reject the plane.
The U.S. Constitution has a provision called the “Emmer clause” that prohibits the provision of gifts to public officials to foreign governments without permission from Congress. The transfer has not been approved by Congress.
The president believes that aircraft transfer is legal because it is for the U.S. Department of Defense rather than individuals. He also insisted that he would not use it after leaving the office.
The current Air Force fleet includes two 747-200 jets used since 1990 and several smaller 757 aircraft.
Trump expressed dissatisfaction with aircraft maker Boeing, which signed a Boeing directly to provide two 747-8s to the White House.
His team negotiated in the first semester of his term, despite repeated delays, and Boeing warned that they would be out of service within two or three years.
Trump secretly visited the Catari plane in Palm Beach near his Margrago resort a few weeks after his second term.
The president insisted that there was no involvement of Quid-Pro-Quo, which was a simple exchange between the two allies.
He wrote that he wrote: “The Department of Defense is receiving free gifts from 747 aircraft to temporarily replace the 40-year-old Air Force One in a very open and transparent deal.”
Kathari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani said the transfer was “a government-to-government deal.
“It has nothing to do with personal relationships – both on the US side, and on the Qatar side. It's between the two defense ministries,” he said.
But these assertions have hardly calmed down criticism of the deal, including many allies from Congress and right-wing media.
“I don't think it's worth the wrongdoing,” Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican of Kentucky, told Fox News.
Paul said: “I wonder if our ability to judge (Qatar) human rights records will be clouded by the fact that this big gift.”
Another Republican senator, Ted Cruz of Texas, said accepting gifts would bring “significant espionage and surveillance issues.”