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    ‘This is the looting of America’: Trump and Co’s extraordinary conflicts of interest in his second term

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    The South Lawn of the White House had never seen anything like it. The president of the United States was posing for the world’s media against a backdrop of five different models of Tesla, peddling the electric vehicles with the alacrity of a salesman on commission.“I love the product, it’s beautiful,” Donald Trump said as he sank into the driver’s seat of a scarlet Model Y. With the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, beside him, he went on to enlighten the American people that some Tesla models retail for as little as $299 a month, “which is pretty low”.That same day, within hours of the White House’s makeover into a Tesla showroom, the New York Times revealed that Musk had decided to invest $100m in political groups working for Trump. The massive injection of capital would enhance the nearly $300m Musk had already spent getting Trump elected.A week after the commercial on the South Lawn, on 19 March, Trump’s commerce secretary, the billionaire investment banker Howard Lutnick, went on Fox News and exhorted viewers to “buy Tesla”. “Who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk’s stock?” he gushed. “He is probably the best person to bet on I’ve ever met.”At the time Lutnick made those remarks, he had yet to divest himself from Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm he had led for 35 years. He was talking up stock in which he still had a vested interest – Cantor held $300m in Tesla shares, a stake that has since soared to $555m. And the commerce secretary was also bigging up his friend Musk, whose SpaceX and Starlink businesses are regulated by the commerce department that Lutnick now controlled.Eight days in March, three friendly billionaires, one of them the world’s most powerful person, another the world’s richest person. Doing what friends do: scratching each other’s backs. Even though Musk later fell out with Trump – in a shocking social media spat that roiled US politics – the imagery remains powerful and highly symbolic of Trump’s second term in the White House.View image in fullscreenBetween them they committed in those eight days acts that, had they occurred during any previous presidency – including Trump’s own first administration – would have provoked howls of protest concerning quid pro quo. Yet those eight days represent just a tiny slice of the graft and possible misconduct that is unfolding.The gift by the Qatari government of a $400m luxury jetliner to be repurposed as Air Force One has become the paradigm of the blitz of ethical dilemmas unleashed by Trump. The Pentagon last month accepted possession of the plane, which will be transferred to Trump’s presidential library once he leaves office.That Trump doggedly accepted the Qatari “palace in the sky” despite widespread condemnation speaks volumes about how indomitable he feels at this moment. He has shrugged aside the rebukes even of devoted Trump supporters, including the rightwing commentator Ben Shapiro, who bridled at the transfer’s grubby appearance, calling it “skeezy stuff”.It also shows Trump’s disdain for the US constitution, given the emoluments clause’s clear prohibition. Presidents are not allowed to accept high-value gifts from foreign governments without congressional consent.Yet the luxury jumbo jet is also just the thinnest edge of a very fat wedge. There has been so much more that has flown, if not under the radar, then partially obscured from sight amid the ethical blizzard of corruption and influence.There have been multimillion-dollar TV packages, real estate deals in Arab petrostates, dinners with the president going for $5m a pop, plum job offers for contributors to Trump’s inaugural fund, cryptocurrency ventures attracting lucre from secret foreign investors, “drill, baby, drill” enticements for oil and energy donations – the list goes on, and on … and on.View image in fullscreenTrump and his team of billionaires have led the US on a dizzying journey into the moral twilight that has left public sector watchdogs struggling to keep up. Which is precisely the intention, said Kathleen Clark, a government ethics lawyer and law professor at Washington University in Saint Louis.“They have mastered the technique of flooding the zone – doing so much so fast that they are overwhelming the ability of ethics groups and institutions to respond.”Chris Murphy, the Democratic US senator from Connecticut, has delivered two long speeches on the floor of his chamber in which he has itemised Trump and Co’s most controversial transactions. The record already stretches to scores of entries, chronicling what Murphy calls Trump’s “efforts to steal from the American people to enrich himself and his friends”.In an interview with the Guardian, the senator said that Trump’s was a “pay-for-play administration. That’s the underlying theme. You pay Donald Trump money, he does favors for you. That’s old-fashioned corruption.”Clark’s analysis is even more pointed. “People talk about ‘guardrails’ and ‘norms’ and ‘conflict of interest’, which is all very relevant,” she said. “But this is theft and destruction. This is the looting of America.”Trump signaled that he would be a president like no other at the start of his first term, when he became the only occupant of the Oval Office in modern times to refuse to divest his assets by putting them into a blind trust. Though presidents are not bound by conflict of interest laws applying to other elected officials, the norm has been for incumbents to set themselves high standards, the archetype being Jimmy Carter’s sale of his peanut farm.Trump, by contrast, put his assets in a trust that remained under the control of his family, with him as its sole beneficiary. He incurred numerous accusations of first-term conflicts of interest, as foreign officials from 20 countries descended on his hotels, while Secret Service agents in Trump’s security detail were made to pay premium rates, pouring at least $10m into his bank account.Such unprecedented disregard for time-honored ethical boundaries was shocking at the time. Now it looks merely quaint.“In the first Trump administration there were ethical lapses,” said Danielle Caputo, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center watchdog organization. “With this new administration, there’s not just a disregard for ethics rules, there’s contempt.”The conversion of political power into cash began even before Trump re-entered the White House. Weeks before the inauguration, Melania Trump sealed a $40m deal with Jeff Bezos for an Amazon Prime “behind-the-scenes” documentary on her life.Trump banked millions of dollars of his own by leveraging his status as president-elect to browbeat tech companies. He settled disputes over the freezing of his then Twitter and Facebook accounts in the wake of the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, prising $10m out of his friend Musk, and $25m from Meta.View image in fullscreenTrump used the months leading up to November’s election to test-run what, as Murphy noted, has become a theme of his second presidency – pay-to-play. He invited oil executives to Mar-a-Lago and, as the Washington Post revealed, offered them a “deal” in which they would donate $1bn to his campaign and in return he would tear up profit-limiting environmental regulations once he was back in the White House.He kept his promise: on day one of his new administration he discharged a barrage of pro-fossil fuel actions.Donors to his record-breaking $239m inaugural fund have also found Trump to be a grateful benefactor. Warren Stephens, an investment banker who gave $4m, was rewarded with the role of US ambassador to the UK; Jared Issacman, a billionaire pilot and close associate of Musk’s, gave $2m to the fund and was tapped to lead Nasa (he was abruptly yanked from the appointment last month after he was reportedly discovered to have been been donating to Democrats).The pattern has continued into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Three months into the administration, Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, launched an elite private members’ club named Executive Branch which commands a sign-in fee of a cool $500,000.Its attraction? Access to cabinet members and top Trump advisers.Not to be outdone by his own son, Trump himself has followed the same playbook at his Mar-a-Lago resort. In March, he began inviting business leaders to dine with him in group settings at $1m a seat.Prefer something more intimate? No problem. One-on-one meetings are also available, yours for $5m.For a seasoned observer such as Norman Eisen of the Brookings Institution, the sheer mass of problematic transactions puts the administration beyond the pale. “It’s over the line, unlawful, corrupt and unethical. It is un-American.”Eisen has experience dealing with knotty ethical issues. He was special counsel for ethics during Barack Obama’s first year in the White House.Obama notes in his autobiography, A Promised Land, that Eisen earned himself the title of Dr No, so strict was his approach to conflicts of interest. He would tell White House officials hoping to attend outside events that “if it sounds fun, you can’t go”.View image in fullscreenEisen told the Guardian that he prevented Obama from refinancing his family home in Chicago. “He was regulating the banking industry at the time, in the midst of the Great Recession.”The contrast between such almost pedantic strictures and the free-for-all in today’s White House astonishes and dismays Eisen. “If my somewhat tongue in cheek motto for Obama was ‘If it’s fun, you can’t do it,’ then the motto of the Trump White House seems to be ‘If you can make a buck, grab it.’”Exhibit one of such conduct, Eisen suggests, is the Trump family’s dive into the world of crypto. Shortly before the inauguration, they launched personal lines of meme coins, $Trump and $Melania.Then they issued a new cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar, known as a stablecoin. Taken together, Eisen believes that the two crypto ventures from the family of a sitting president amount to “one of the worst and most shocking conflicts of interest in our nation’s history”.Trump bragged on the campaign trail that he would turn the US into the “crypto capital of the planet”. He was more circumspect in front of his faithful followers about the big plans his sons were simultaneously developing to cash in on the currency.Since his election victory, Trump has used his presidential status and executive power to boost not only the general standing of crypto but also his personal stake within it. One of his early executive orders created a “strategic bitcoin reserve” designed to bolster the industry.At the same time, he eviscerated basic regulatory controls, halted federal crypto-related lawsuits and disbanded a taskforce trained to hunt down crypto criminals. “We have a president whose net worth now includes very substantial investments in cryptocurrency who at the same time is loosening regulations on the crypto industry,” Eisen said.The unrivalled magnetism of the US presidency helped Trump to blast his nascent meme coin, a currency almost entirely reliant on hype, into the stratosphere. It rocketed from $6.50 on inauguration day to a peak of $73.Then, when it predictably plummeted back down to below $10, he used his presidential allure brazenly once again to boost the coin. This time he announced a “private intimate dinner” for the top 220 $Trump investors, followed by an exclusive White House tour for the top 25.The ensuing scramble for a seat at the presidential dining table reportedly earned the Trump family $148m.The $Trump meme coin is an ethics regulator’s waking nightmare. There is little transparency around who is channelling money into it, and even less around the potentially nefarious motives of investors.The same might be said about the Trumps’ other big crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, which was launched last September by Trump’s sons. The president himself is listed by the company as its “chief crypto advocate”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFederal law sets tight rules against foreign parties donating to presidential campaign or inaugural funds. Yet there is nothing to prevent outside interests with connections to foreign governments engaging with World Liberty and its new product, the USD1 stablecoin.One of its biggest backers is the Chinese-born crypto billionaire Justin Sun (best known for paying $6.2m at a New York art sale for a banana taped to a wall, then eating it). Before the inauguration, Sun pumped $75m into World Liberty. A few weeks later, the Securities and Exchange Commission paused an investigation into him for alleged securities fraud.View image in fullscreenUSD1 is currently valued at $2.3bn, the lion’s share of which comes from a $2bn transaction by MGX, a firm which happens to be chaired by the intelligence chief of the United Arab Emirates. That a company with ties to the government of an Arab petrostate should be able to make such a giant investment in a crypto venture generating profit for the sitting US president and his family goes against the grain of decades of robust accountability work countering conflicts of interest.“We’ve been pretty successful in this country rooting out corruption, or at least pushing it into the shadows,” Murphy, the US senator, told the Guardian. “Now it happens out in the open.”And it doesn’t stop there. Over the past few months Trump’s second son, Eric, has been frenetically traveling the globe in search of real estate deals, throwing to the winds the pledge Trump made in his first administration to eschew any foreign business transactions.In his second administration, Trump has made no such promise. All he has conceded this time, in a document released by his lawyers in January, is that the Trump Organization will avoid cutting business deals with foreign governments.Even that boundary has been pushed close to breaking point. Eric Trump sealed his first deal since Trump re-entered the White House in April.It involves the construction of the Trump International Golf Club & Villas outside the Qatari capital, Doha, as part of a $5bn luxury beachside resort. The company managing the development, Qatari Diar, is owned by the sovereign wealth fund of the Qatari government.Two weeks after the Trump Organization announced the deal, the president himself arrived in Doha as part of his three-country tour of the Middle East. He declared the trip a huge success, having drummed up trillions of dollars of business and investments for the US.The Guardian invited the White House to comment on complaints that the president has blurred his public duties with his family’s personal profit-making activities to a degree never before seen in the US. A White House spokesperson replied with a statement which they asked us to print in its entirety, so here goes:“There are no conflicts of interest. President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. It is shameful that the Guardian is ignoring the GOOD deals President Trump has secured for the American people, not for himself, to push a false narrative. President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”The argument that there is no conflict of interest because Trump’s business is handled by his children, specifically his sons – Don Jr leading on crypto and his social media empire, Eric on real estate – is an interesting one. Sons seem to be de rigueur, to the extent that members of Trump’s inner circle who lack them might feel the need to borrow one.View image in fullscreenTake other key figures in Trump’s cabinet, which is packed with so many banking and energy billionaires that it ranks as the richest presidential cabinet in modern history. Lutnick, the commerce secretary, who has a personal fortune of about $2.2bn, has been involved in various accusations of conflict of interest since he encouraged Fox News viewers to “buy Tesla”.At the start of this year Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm Lutnick led for almost four decades, increased its investment in Strategy, the biggest corporate holder of bitcoin in the world. Cantor’s stake rose by several hundred million dollars to $1.3bn, research by the watchdog Accountable.US has found.At the same time, Lutnick was actively helping Trump create his strategic bitcoin reserve, a move that greatly strengthened the cryptocurrency.Last month, Lutnick divested himself of his Cantor stake, but he did so by transferring his ownership to his two sons. Cantor is now controlled by Brandon Lutnick, 27, and Kyle Lutnick, 28.Or take Robert F Kennedy Jr, the vaccine-skeptic health secretary. Under intense pressure from Democratic senators, he agreed to divest his 10% stake in any payout from an ongoing lawsuit in which he is engaged against Merck over its HPV vaccine, Gardasil.Government officials are not allowed under federal law to participate personally in official matters in which they have a financial interest. So what did Kennedy do? He transferred his stake in the case to one of his adult sons.And then there’s Mehmet Oz, the multimillionaire physician better known by his TV name, Dr Oz, whom Trump put in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. As the Washington Post has reported, Oz co-founded a health benefits company, ZorroRX, that helps hospitals save on prescription drugs.This would have been an indisputable conflict of interest, because in his job as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Oz wields huge sway over hospital drug policies, and thus ZorroRX profits. Since taking up the position Oz, whose wealth is put at up to $300m, has divested himself of some of his investment portfolio and is no longer mentioned on ZorroRX’s website.View image in fullscreenHis fellow co-founder of ZorroRX, however, is still listed as the firm’s head of medical affairs. That’s his son, Oliver Oz.Under federal conflict of interest law, there is no prohibition on adult children managing the interests of parents who hold public office. Yet the spirit of the law does force us to reflect on why so many Trump administration leaders are so fond of handing sensitive money-making portfolios to their sons.“By giving over to your son, you are immediately raising questions about how separate you are going to be from the success of this business,” said Caputo of the Campaign Legal Center. “Will you be focused on what’s best for the public, or will you be guided in your decision-making by what would most benefit your family?”In the last analysis, what matters most perhaps about the financial dealings of the Trump administration is what impact they are having on the American people. In particular, what is it doing to the 77 million voters who put their trust in Trump and sent him back to the Oval Office?Trump returned to the White House partly on his promise to working-class Americans that he would “drain the swamp”, liberating Washington from the bloodsucking of special interests. Yet a review by the Campaign Legal Center found that Trump nominated at least 21 former lobbyists to top positions in his new administration, many of whom are now regulating the very industries on whose behalf they recently advocated.Eight of them, the Campaign Legal Center concluded, would have been banned or restricted in their roles under all previous modern presidencies, including Trump’s own first administration.They include Pam Bondi, the US attorney general. She approved the gift of the Qatari luxury jetliner as “legally permissible”, having herself worked as a lobbyist for Qatar.Trump’s other great pledge was that he would put the wellbeing of “forgotten” working people before that of the vested elites. His appeal was pitched at the millions of rural and working-class Americans who have languished from mounting income inequality, the decline of manufacturing jobs in the globalised economy, and what he claimed was the negative effects of millions of undocumented immigrants.Evan Feinman has witnessed personally and up close how this promise has fared in Trump 2.0. For the past three years, Feinman was busy leading a $42.5bn program created by Congress to bring affordable high-speed internet to every American home and business that needed it.The project was vast and ambitious, on a par with the rural electrification drive that transformed the heartlands of America in the 1930s. Located within the US commerce department, its success is critical to the future prosperity of millions of Americans, especially those in hard-bitten rural areas of the sort that solidly backed Trump in the last election.Studies have shown that giving families access to the internet improves the grades of school students, increases college enrolment and reduces the likelihood of households falling into debt. It also helps older Americans stay in their own homes and avoid residential care.By the inauguration, the broadband project was well under way, with several states only weeks away from breaking ground and laying the cables. Then Lutnick took over the reins of the commerce department.Within a days of his confirmation, Lutnick met with senior managers and informed them he wanted to scale back on the use of fibre optic and switch to satellite. According to an account of the meeting that was given to Feinman by someone present, Lutnick specifically inquired after his friend Musk, the CEO of Starlink, which provides internet services through low-Earth orbit satellites.View image in fullscreenDays after that, Feinman was told he was being let go. His contract was up for renewal, and it wasn’t being extended.“I was dismayed,” Feinman told the Guardian, insisting that his distress was not so much related to his own dismissal but out of concern for the Americans who would be harmed by the shift. By his reckoning, satellite internet would not only be slower than broadband, it would also be much more expensive – costing users an extra $840 a year in fees.“For Americans in rural locations, that’s going to really hurt. Many of the president’s strongest supporters – up to hundreds of thousands of families who voted for Trump – are going to see slower, more expensive internet services, and all to the benefit of the wealthiest man on earth.”According to some estimates, Musk’s Starlink stands to make $10bn to $20bn should the shift from broadband to satellite internet go ahead.The episode has left Feinman “deeply saddened. I see my nation harming itself in ways that are inexplicable and entirely avoidable.”He fears for rural Americans who will pay the price. “These are communities who put their trust in this administration. They are going to find that their trust has not been honored, and it will be to their significant future detriment.” More

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      U.S. Was Not Involved in Israeli Strikes on Iran, Rubio Says

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      President Trump has said he would like to negotiate a deal with Tehran over its nuclear program but had also acknowledged that Israel might attack Iran first.Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the United States had no involvement in Israel’s unilateral strikes on Iran but had been told that Israel considered the attack necessary for its self-defense.President Trump, who has been pushing for a deal with Iran on its nuclear program, was hosting the annual White House picnic on Thursday evening when reports of the strikes emerged from Tehran.Despite his expressed hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough, Mr. Trump had also acknowledged on Thursday that Israel might attack first.In a statement, Mr. Rubio said: “We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense.” It was not immediately clear how much detail about the strike Israel had provided the United States, its main ally, and how far in advance.Despite the Trump administration distancing itself from the attacks, its statements and precautionary measures this week have indicated the concern that Iran’s retaliation, which is expected to be swift, could also include American targets in the Middle East.“Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel,” Mr Rubio said.On Wednesday, the United States withdrew diplomats from Iraq, Iran’s neighbor to the west, and authorized the voluntary departure of the family members of U.S. military personnel from the Middle East. The U.S. military has a large fleet of warplanes, naval vessels and thousands of troops stationed at its bases in the region, including in Qatar and Bahrain, just around 150 miles across the gulf from Iran.Iran’s defense minister said this week that if nuclear talks failed and a conflict arose with the United States, his country’s military would target all American bases in the region.It was unclear what impact Israel’s strikes would have on the ongoing negotiations between the Trump administration and Iran, or on Mr. Trump’s relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The president had spoken with the Israeli leader on Monday but did not give any details about the conversation.In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has said he has urged Israel to hold off on military strikes while the negotiations were taking place. Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, was expected to meet Iran’s foreign minister in Oman on Sunday for the next round of talks.Around the time Israel began to strike Iran, Mr. Trump said he remained committed to a diplomatic resolution.“My entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran,” he posted on social media around 5 p.m. Eastern time. “They could be a Great Country, but they first must completely give up hopes of obtaining a Nuclear Weapon.” More

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      Top Democrat Warns Hegseth He Could Face Fines for Accepting Qatari Plane

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      Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland urged the defense secretary to come to Congress for approval of the jet President Trump wants to use as Air Force One.Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, informed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday that he could face steep fines for having accepted a luxury jet from the Qatari government, arguing the gift violated the Constitution and a federal gifts law, and required congressional approval.Mr. Hegseth was the official who formally accepted a Boeing 747 jetliner from Qatar last month, according to a Defense Department spokesman. The Pentagon has directed the Air Force to upgrade its security measures so that President Trump can use the plane as a new Air Force One.The gift has raised a host of concerns among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Some have focused on national security risks, saying they worry the plane might have listening devices, or that Mr. Trump’s desire for a new plane before he leaves office might rush any security upgrade and lead corners to be cut on critical protection systems.But many lawmakers, especially Democrats such as Mr. Raskin, have focused on the ethical issues raised by a lavish gift to an American president from a foreign government. They have accused Mr. Trump of corruption and expressed fears that Qatar may be trying to improperly influence the Trump administration.In a letter on Wednesday, Mr. Raskin, a former professor of constitutional law, warned Mr. Hegseth that his acceptance of the plane violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from accepting financial benefits from foreign governments without Congress’s approval.Congress has not yet taken any formal vote to accept the plane as a gift from Qatar. Officials in the Trump administration have said that the gift is to the U.S. government, not to him as president, and therefore that it does not violate the Constitution or ethics laws.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Trump’s Search for a New Air Force One Led to Qatar’s Jet

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      President Trump wanted a quick solution to his Air Force One problem.The United States signed a $3.9 billion contract with Boeing in 2018 for two jets to be used as Air Force One, but a series of delays had slowed the work far past the 2024 delivery deadline, possibly beyond Mr. Trump’s second term.Now Mr. Trump had to fly around in the same old planes that transported President George H.W. Bush 35 years ago. It wasn’t just a vanity project. Those planes, which are no longer in production, require extensive servicing and frequent repairs, and officials from both parties, reaching back a decade or more, had been pressing for replacements.Mr. Trump, though, wanted a new plane while he was still in office. But how?“We’re the United States of America,” Mr. Trump said this month. “I believe that we should have the most impressive plane.”The story of how the Trump administration decided that it would accept a free luxury Boeing 747-8 from Qatar to serve as Air Force One involved weeks of secret coordination between Washington and Doha. The Pentagon and the White House’s military office swung into action, and Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, played a key role.Soon after Mr. Trump took office, military officials started to discuss how the United States could buy a temporary plane for Mr. Trump to use while Boeing’s work creaked along, an investigation by The New York Times found. But by May 11, when the president announced on social media that Qatar would be providing the plane to the United States, he characterized it as “a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE.”There are lingering questions about how much financial sense the still-unsigned deal would make, given the costs of refitting the plane for presidential use and operating it over the long run — or even whether the plane could be ready for Mr. Trump to use before the end of his second term.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump once condemned Qatar. How things have changed | Mohamad Bazzi

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      On his tour of the Middle East last week, Donald Trump was treated like royalty by the leaders of the wealthiest countries in the Arab world. The US president was feted in gilded ballrooms, his motorcade was flanked by dozens of men riding white Arabian horses and he was awarded an elaborate gold medal necklace. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates went out of their way to show Trump that they respect him more than his predecessor, Joe Biden.While Trump frequently praised Saudi and UAE leaders during his first term, he was highly critical of Qatar, a small emirate that is rich in natural gas but usually overshadowed by its two larger and more powerful neighbors. In June 2017, Trump said Qatar “has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level” and he supported a blockade against the country, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Qatar’s neighbors accused it of financing terrorism by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and being too cozy with Iran. The blockade, which disrupted the lives of thousands of people across the Persian Gulf, stretched until early 2021.Today, Qatar has emerged as the unlikely success story of Trump’s first state visit of his second term. It was no accident that the Qatari royal family recently offered to donate a $400m luxury jet – a “palace in the sky” Boeing 747 – that the president could use as Air Force One for the rest of his term. The plane’s ownership would then be transferred to Trump’s presidential library, meaning he would be able to continue using the jet after he leaves office. Despite the administration’s convoluted effort to frame this as a donation from Qatar to the US government, it would in effect be a gift for Trump’s personal benefit.It’s yet another way that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family business, which has ongoing deals for Trump-branded real estate projects and golf resorts worth billions of dollars in the three wealthy Gulf petrostates that Trump visited last week. So far, neither Congress nor US courts have tried to sanction Trump over the US constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which forbids the president from accepting gifts or payments from a foreign government without congressional approval.Qatar seems to have won Trump’s respect with its lavish gift and a charm offensive built around its role as a global mediator that is able to bring enemies together. During the first Trump administration, Qatar brokered a peace agreement between the US and Taliban leaders, which was supposed to lead to a phased withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. During the Biden administration, Qatar hosted indirect talks for a prisoner swap between Iran and the US, which included unblocking $6bn in frozen Iranian oil funds – an agreement that Washington later rescinded.But Qatar’s most high-stakes mediation role has been to serve as the main conduit for negotiations between Israel and Hamas, after the October 2023 Hamas attack and Israel’s devastating war on Gaza. The Qataris helped broker a one-week ceasefire in November 2023, and a two-month truce that started this past January and collapsed in March.Yet since the emirate emerged as a primary mediator in Gaza, politicians in both the US and Israel ratcheted up their attacks on Qatar. They accused its leaders of supporting terrorism by hosting members of Hamas’s political leadership in Doha, the Qatari capital, where several settled after they were forced out of Damascus for turning against the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was facing a popular uprising. Throughout the stalled Gaza negotiations, several members of Congress demanded that the Biden administration pressure Qatar to close the Hamas offices and expel its leaders. The Qataris resisted those demands and consistently pointed out that Barack Obama’s administration had asked Qatar in 2012 to establish an indirect channel that would allow the US to communicate with Hamas.After news broke of Qatar’s plan to donate the luxury jet to Trump, some figures in the president’s Maga movement revived complaints about the emirate’s support for Hamas and other Islamist groups. “We cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits,” Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who last month convinced Trump to fire six White House national security staffers, wrote on X. She added: “I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.”But most of the Republicans in Congress who had urged Biden to punish Qatar for its support of Hamas have so far stayed quiet about Trump’s decision to accept the $400m plane and cozy up to Qatar’s rulers. That’s partly an indication of how Trump has successfully banished or ignored many hawkish Republicans and neoconservatives during his second term, preferring to negotiate with Iran and other US adversaries. Qatar’s role as a mediator that can resolve regional conflicts is particularly attractive to Trump, who sees himself as the ultimate dealmaker.In this term, Trump has surrounded himself with longtime friends as top advisers, including Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer who is serving as the president’s Middle East envoy and all-around troubleshooter. Witkoff has been publicly praising Qatar’s leaders for their mediation efforts with Hamas since he took office in January – and the envoy’s praise is clearly resonating with Trump, who has dramatically changed his approach toward Qatar. “They’re good, decent people,” Witkoff said of the Qataris during an interview in March with Tucker Carlson, the rightwing media host and Maga figure. “What they want is a mediation that’s effective, that gets to a peace goal. And why? Because they’re a small nation and they want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker.”Witkoff’s comments echoed the strategy of Qatar’s ruler, the 44-year-old Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who took power in 2013 when his father abdicated the throne. The emir has tried to position Qatar as a force in global geopolitics not just for prestige, but also as a way to ensure his ruling family’s survival amid sometimes aggressive neighbors. (Those neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have tried to impose their own foreign policy directives on Qatar, as they did during the blockade that Trump supported in his first term.) Qatar still walks a tightrope of proving itself crucial to the US and western powers by being one of the world’s largest and most reliable suppliers of liquified natural gas, and also maintaining ties with non-state groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban.Qatar has tried to hedge its bets by positioning itself to play an outsize role as a dealmaker, one that a country of its size would not normally take on. That policy began under the current emir’s father, who launched the state-owned Al Jazeera satellite network in 1996 as part of Qatar’s soft-power campaign to increase its influence in the Middle East. And while Qatar directly funded Islamist groups soon after the 2011 Arab uprisings in Syria, Libya and Egypt, the emirate’s leaders became more cautious in recent years and shifted toward cementing their role as global negotiators.For decades, Qatari leaders have also worked to solidify a military alliance with the US. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, they allowed Washington to use Al-Udeid Air Base outside Doha to launch air strikes against Afghanistan. Qatar later invested $8bn to upgrade the base, which has become the largest US military installation in the Middle East, housing up to 10,000 troops. On Thursday, as Trump wrapped up his visit to Qatar, he delivered a meandering, campaign-style speech to US troops stationed at the base. He bragged about economic agreements he had signed with Qatari leaders the previous day, which the White House valued at more than $243bn.Trump also expounded on the value of Qatar’s loyalty: “I don’t think our friendship has ever been stronger than it is right now.” Earlier on Thursday, he praised Qatar’s emir and told a meeting of business leaders: “We are going to protect you.”For Trump, who sees all diplomacy as transactional, that is the ultimate favor he can bestow: US protection for a foreign leader who is trying to resolve regional conflicts – and also happened to offer the president an extravagant gift.

      Mohamad Bazzi is the director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University More

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      Trump’s acceptance of Qatar jet gift is ‘definition of corruption’, senator says

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      Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m Boeing jet from Qatar is the “definition of corruption”, a leading Democrat said on Sunday, as several senior Republicans joined in a bipartisan fusillade of criticism and concern over the luxury gift.Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, condemned the “flying grift” on NBC’s Meet the Press as he assailed the president’s trip to several Gulf states this week that included a stop in Qatar.“Why did he choose these three countries for his first major foreign trip? It’s not because these are our most important allies or the most important countries in the world,” he said of Trump’s visit to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.“It’s because these are the three countries willing to pay him off. Every single one of these countries is giving Trump money, the plane from Qatar, an investment in his cryptocurrency scam from the UAE, and they are asking for national security concessions in return.“This is the definition of corruption. Foreign governments putting money in the president’s pocket and then the US giving them national security concessions that hurt our own security.”Rand Paul, a Republican US senator for Kentucky, and chair of his chamber’s homeland security committee, told ABC’s This Week that the gift of the jet “at least gives the appearance of a conflict of interest”.And Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president during his first Oval Office term, said it was “inconsistent with our security” during an appearance on Meet the Press in which he pointed out Qatar had been previously accused of financing international terrorism.Trump has insisted he would be “stupid” to refuse Qatar’s offer of the jet, which would serve as the new Air Force One before being donated to his presidential library upon his retirement.But the proposal enraged even close allies of the president, some calling it the opposite of Trump’s promise to drain the swamp – and “a stain on the administration”.Trump lashed out at critics on his Truth Social network on Saturday, claiming the gift was to the US and not personally for him.Murphy told NBC that was not true. “The plane is not a gift to the American people,” he said. “It is going directly to Donald Trump.“That library will take a decade to build, and so once he leaves the White House, until the library is built, he gets to use that plane to fly around all of his billionaire friends while his policies result in millions of Americans losing their healthcare and having to pay higher costs.”Pence said Trump should turn down the offer.“Qatar has a long history of playing both sides. They support Hamas,” he said. “They supported Al-Qaida. Qatar has actually financed pro-Hamas protests on American campuses across the US, so the very idea that we would accept an Air Force One from Qatar I think is inconsistent with our security, with our intelligence needs.“There are profound issues, the potential for intelligence gathering, the need to ensure the president is safe and secure as he travels around the world, and of course there are very real constitutional issues. The constitution prohibits public officials from accepting a present from a foreign state.“It’s just a bad idea and my hope is the president will think better of it.”Paul said he could see a way in which the gift would be acceptable – but that Trump had handled the offer poorly.“My fear is that it detracts from a largely successful trip where the president is talking about opening up and doing more trade with the Middle East,” he said.“I’ve been part of vetoing or trying to veto arms [sales] to Qatar, as well as to Saudi Arabia, over human rights abuses. So could it color the perception of the administration if they have a $400m plane to be more in favor of these things. It at least gives the appearance of a conflict of interest. I don’t think it’s worth the headache.” More

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      ‘Very disturbing’: Trump receipt of overseas gifts unprecedented, experts warn

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      Former White House lawyers, diplomatic protocol officers and foreign affairs experts have told the Guardian that Donald Trump’s receipt of overseas gifts and targeted investments are “unprecedented”, as the White House remakes US foreign policy under a pay-for-access code that eclipses past administrations with characteristic Trumpian excess.The openness to foreign largesse was on full display this week as the US president was feted in the Gulf states during his first major diplomatic trip abroad this term, inking deals he claimed were worth trillions of dollars and pumping local leaders for investments as he says he remakes US foreign policy to prioritise “America first” – putting aside concerns of human rights or international law for the bottom line of American businesses and taxpayers.But quite often, the bottom line also has benefited Trump himself. His family’s wealth has ballooned by more than $3bn, according to press estimates, and the reported benefits from cryptocurrencies and other investment deals such as plans for new Trump-branded family properties may be far larger. Deals for billions more have been inked by business associates close to Trump, meaning that their political support for the White House can translate into lucrative contracts abroad.“When we’re negotiating with other countries, the concern is that our negotiating position will change if someone does a favor or delivers a gift to the president of the United States,” Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer in the administration of George W Bush, said.“Whether it’s trying to resolve the Russia-Ukraine war, or the Middle East or anything else. You know the the impression is given that the position of the United States can be swayed and even bought.”Others argue that the message being sent by the White House is that American foreign policy is being sold to the highest bidder.View image in fullscreen“Trump has put a for-sale sign out front of the White House,” said Norm Eisen, the executive director of the legal advocacy group State Democracy Defenders Fund and a White House “ethics czar” and ambassador to the Czech Republic under Barack Obama. “Of course you’re going to see Qatar and UAE as like a bidding war. Qatar says: ‘I’ll give you a $400m plane,’ and the UAE says: ‘Hold my beer, I’ll give your crypto company $2bn.’”In a particularly eye-catching incident this week, Qatar offered to give the US Department of Defense a $400m Boeing 747-8 that Trump had suggested could be used as Air Force One and then passed on to his presidential library after he leaves office.The plane has become a lightning rod among US Democrats, and critics have argued it violates the emoluments clause of the constitution that prohibits the president from receiving gifts from foreign entities.Trump had called the plane a “great gesture” from Qatar and said that it would be “stupid” for him not to accept the gift. A Democratic lawmaker had called the plane a “flying palace”, and even diehard Maga supporters such as the commentators Laura Loomer and Ben Shapiro have criticised it publicly.Painter suggested that it would be similar to King George III gifting George Washington a copy of the royal stagecoach for his use in office. “You think the founders wouldn’t have considered that a bribe?” he said.But Gulf states have offered other incentives, including a $2bn investment from a UAE-controlled funds into a Trump-linked stablecoin that could incentivise the president to shape foreign policy in favour of Abu Dhabi.An advisory sent to congressional Democrats this week and seen by the Guardian said: “President Trump and the Trump family have moved at breakneck speed to profit from a massive crypto scam on the American people.”The gifts, and in particular the potential gift of a jet, have led to a series of denunciations on Capitol Hill as they seek to build momentum for a legislative push.“This isn’t America first. This is not what he promised the American people. This is Trump first,” said Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut. “He is willing to put our nation’s security at risk, take unconstitutional bribes, just so he can fly himself and his Mar-a-Lago golf buddies around the world in gold-plated luxury planes gifted to him by foreign governments.”But is it illegal? As Qatar would give the jet to the Department of Defense, some experts have said that it may not directly violate the emoluments clause or other laws, even if Trump were to make use of the plane while in office.“Never seen it before,” said Scott Amey, the general counsel of the Project On Government Oversight, a non-profit government watchdog group based in Washington. “Is it allowed? I’m still uncertain.”Past administrations would have run from the perceived conflicts of interest being welcomed by Trump. The former White House ethics advisers described crises such as when a Gulf state tried to present a Rolex to a national security adviser, or when the Boston Red Sox tried to gift the White House chief of staff a baseball bat signed by all the players (the addressee was forced to pay its estimated market value, said Painter). Eisen said that he forbade Obama from even refinancing the mortgage on his house in Chicago because of his capacities to influence the market.“The status quo has been saying no, because it’s an actual and apparent conflict of interest, and it could jeopardize our domestic and foreign policies,” said Amey. ”It certainly doesn’t pass the sniff test for a lot of Americans.”The lavish gifts and other investments come as Trump is reshaping America’s policy in the Middle East, skipping Israel and turning toward the Gulf states in a flurry of deal-making that could benefit both sides handsomely. And Trump’s family and other advisers, such as Steve Witkoff, with interests in the Gulf states are closely involved.View image in fullscreen“When the first Trump administration came in, I saw that people in the Gulf said, ‘Finally, an American administration we understand. He sends us his son-in-law to talk to us,’” said Dr F Gregory Gause III of the Middle East Institute, a former professor of international affairs at the Bush School. “It’s a startling change in American norms … the notion that Trump family private business and US government business walk hand in hand is remarkable.”While potential gifts like a jet cannot be hidden, the potential to move billions of dollars in cryptocurrency secretly has watchdogs, the political opposition and other foreign observers deeply concerned. “We’re talking about billions of dollars, almost infinite money, that can be paid by anyone,” said one senior European diplomat. One little-known China-linked firm with no revenue last year bought $300m of a Trump meme coin this week, raising further concerns of dark foreign money moving into US politics.Senate Democrats have called for rewriting the Genius Act, Trump-backed legislation that they say would provide for far-too-lax regulation of so-called stablecoins, in order to ban him from benefiting. “If Congress is going to supercharge the use of stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies, it must include safeguards that make it harder for criminals, terrorists, and foreign adversaries to exploit the financial system and put our national security at risk,” said the memo.The flood of foreign money has left former officials who used to carefully track the giving of gifts and other goods from foreign government infuriated.The rules can be “annoying and sort of stupid, but it is what separates the good guys from the bad guys, as it relates to corruption and good governance”, said Rufus Gifford, a former head of protocol for the state department, which also tracks gifts to US officials from foreign governments. “And I think that Trump just has no respect for those institutions that have been set up for a very specific purpose, which is to root out corruption.“It is very, very disturbing that a president of the United States could be in a position to profit off the office in which he holds,” he continued. “And that is, again, something that is never supposed to be able to happen. And it’s really quite extraordinary.” More

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      The Guardian view on Trump’s conflicts of interest: the shadow of kleptocracy | Editorial

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      Donald Trump’s tour of Gulf nations this week is notionally state business. The president has discussed trade, investment and defence. But the boundary between statecraft and self-aggrandisement is blurred. To honour the US president, the government of Qatar has  offered him a Boeing 747 aircraft. This “flying palace”, worth around $400m, would serve as a substitute for Air Force One as Mr Trump’s personal jumbo.The US constitution explicitly forbids anyone holding a government office from accepting any “present, emolument, office or title” from foreign powers without congressional consent. White House lawyers, obedient to their master, say the Qatari jet doesn’t cross that line.Accepting gifts from foreign regimes is not the worst constitutional violation committed by the Trump administration. The contempt for due process and rule of law in cases where innocent Americans have been abducted and deported for unproven and spurious immigration offences is more alarming.But corrosion of civil rights and flouting rules of financial propriety are symptoms of the same condition. Mr Trump doesn’t believe in submission to rules of any kind. He recognises no distinction between business conducted in the White House and deals done at Mar-a-Lago. On the eve of his inauguration, Mr Trump launched a crypto asset, $TRUMP, literally monetising the presidency. Last month, it was announced that the top 220 holders of the coin would be invited to dinner with the president.Previous occupants of the Oval Office sold investments or set them aside in blind trusts. Mr Trump’s business empire, managed by his sons, operates as before, except with the added commercial privileges that accrue to association with the most powerful man on Earth. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, runs a private equity company that mostly deals with the state-backed investment funds of Gulf states that Mr Trump is visiting this week.The conflicts of interest are so densely woven that it is difficult to separate the presidency from the commercial ambitions of the presidential entourage. That is a defining feature of state capture in regimes that lack democratic safeguards and where law enforcement is incapable of policing corruption. It is an affront to the principle that public office should be sought with a view to advancing public interest, not exploited for personal enrichment. It is the mark of a kleptocracy.That is not incompatible with the more ideological side of Mr Trump’s project – the promise to make America great again. The president sees himself as a champion of the American people – an incarnation of a national will – so his soaring wealth is synonymous with collective greatness. But if ordinary Americans do not feel themselves enriched, they will turn resentful, perhaps wanting regime change, at which point the president may feel threatened by democracy and seek to disarm it.This is the cycle of authoritarianism permitting corruption, which in turn feeds more authoritarianism. Plenty of dysfunctional states have exhibited this pattern before, but rarely has it been displayed on a scale and a stage as vast as those available to a US president. More