According to ABC News, Donald Trump will be able to use the plane as its new Air Force One jet until he leaves office, where it is tipped to transfer ownership into the Trump Presidential Library Foundation.
The 13-year-old aircraft will apparently be modified to meet US military criteria to transport the president and transferred to the presidential library before January 1, 2029.
Any costs associated with the transfer will also allegedly be covered by the US Air Force.
It is anticipated the grand gift will be unveiled next week when the president visits Qatar, according to sources who have been briefed in on the plans.
Trump has toured the plane before when it was parked at the West Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, in February.
However, the present is bound to raise questions over the ethics of the sitting president accepting such a valuable item from a foreign power, particularly with concerns over possible bribery.
Dozens on Reddit say their employment contracts prohibit them from accepting gifts of major value, with some saying they can’t take anything worth more than $50 worth a year.
Another Redditor said they work ‘federal adjacent’ and have a limit of $25 a year – meaning one time they had to refuse a $28 t-shirt from a supplier.
Others slammed the lavish gift as ‘bribery on the highest scale’.
“Nothing says American exceptionalism like not being able to build our own AF-1. Nothing says MAGA failure like actually accepting this as a gift,” they added.
Anticipating such backlash, sources told the news outlet that lawyers for the White House counsel’s office and the Department of Justice have already been drafted in.
Under the advice, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly to conclude that it is legal to accept the mega-jet as a gift and later hand it over to the Trump library.
It will also state that doing so does not violate any bribery laws or the Constitution’s prohibition of any US government official accepting gifts ‘from any King, Prince or foreign state’.
Sources added Attorney General Pam Bondi and Trump’s own top White House lawyer David Warrington concluded it would be legally permission to receive it and transfer it to Trump’s presidential library before the end of his term.
Both the White House and the DOJ determine that, since the gift is not conditioned on any official act, it bypasses such clauses about bribery – and cannot breach the rule about foreign gifts because the plane is being given to the US Air Fore rather than any specific individual.
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