Donald Trump took possession of his gleaming new plane this week, “Air Fraud One” as the critics have dubbed it. The Boeing 747 is a $400m (£300m) gift from Qatar, an opulent leather-bound, gold-trimmed palace in the sky. “Everything was designed good. It was my taste,” Trump said. And when he leaves office, the plane will be his to keep.
“Air Fraud One” is just one example of how the President has enriched himself and his family. Trump has turned the office of US President into his personal revenue stream. The sums involved are astonishing: billions of dollars, much of it from foreign businesses and foreign governments.
This is exactly what worried America’s Founding Fathers, the Republic rotting from the head down. Article I of the US Constitution contains the Foreign Emoluments Clause: no official, from the president down, may receive a gift from a foreign power unless Congress allows it. They wrote this after the French king Louis XVI gave a gold snuffbox set with 408 diamonds to Benjamin Franklin, America’s first ambassador in Paris. (Franklin did not want to offend the king, who had bankrolled the American Revolution, but he knew how bad the snuffbox looked and so he asked Congress for permission to keep it.)
