[00:00:00] Welcome to Discourse where we cut through the noise and make sense of the chaos. I'm your host, Wayne Unger. I'm a law professor and former Silicon Valley nerd, and I've spent years breaking down complex topics into digestible takeaways. And on this podcast, we'll take a deep dive into the pressing issues shaping our world in law.

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Alright, welcome back to Discourse. I'm your host, Wayne Unger. And before we begin, we are recording today's episode at 9:30 AM on Monday, May 12th and things may have changed since On today's episode we are talking corruption. We've heard the term thrown around in talking points by both political parties in the United States To be fair.

And both sides have claimed that a political opponent is corrupt. We've heard [00:01:00] this, but what does that mean? And we'll get into it on today's episode, but first, what prompted this conversation? Well, several media outlets have reported that Donald Trump is planning to accept a Boeing 7, 4, 7 8 aircraft from the royal family of Qatar.

According to a, b, C news, it is meant as a gift that Trump can use as the new Air Force one until shortly before he leaves office, at which point the aircraft's ownership will transfer to President Trump's presidential library. A BC News also reports that Trump has toured the aircraft, and Trump described it as quote, a flying palace.

End quote. How much is a Boeing 7, 4 7 worth? Well, estimates are all over the place, but every cost estimate that I was able to find online puts a 7 4 7 at over $100 million for a brand new [00:02:00] one and a used one at approximately $25 million. But those numbers are for ordinary seven four sevens. How much is this particular Boeing?

7 47 from the Qatar. Family. Well, Yahoo News reports that it has an estimated value of $400 million, and assuming that this $400 million figure is correct, this would be the most expensive or the most valuable gift from a foreign government that the United States has ever accepted.

Oh, and I should add that as I was researching for this episode, I discovered an article by the Associated Press dated April 30th, 2025, so about two weeks old that somehow I missed two weeks ago. The headline for that article is Trump Company strikes Qatari Golf Resort deal in a sign.

It's not holding back from foreign business. I. [00:03:00] You heard that right? The Trump family business struck a deal last month to build a Trump branded Beachside Villas and an 18 hole golf course in Qatar. Guess who's building it? A Saudi Arabian company and a Qatari company that just so happens to be owned by the Qatari government.

So I'll just leave that here for you to consider. But back to this Boeing 7, 4 7. Is it legal for Trump to accept the gift not without Congressional approval according to the Constitution.

See Article one, section nine, clause eight prohibits anyone holding governmental office from accepting any Emolument office or title from any king, prince, or foreign state without congressional approval. Here's the relevant part. Of the Constitution in full, it states no title of nobility shall be [00:04:00] granted by the United States and no person holding any office of for profit or trust under them shall without the consent of Congress, except any present emolument office title or any kind whatsoever from any king, prince, or foreign state.

Now it is widely acknowledged that the purpose of the foreign emoluments clause is according to Congress's own website to prevent corruption and limit foreign influence. Well, guess what? The Constitutional convention approved of this clause unanimously. Without debate. Given this, I think it's reasonable to conclude that every framer, every founding father of the United States Constitution considered this emoluments clause to be a no-brainer.

Now, white House Press secretary, when asked about the reports, she said that it was quote, ridiculous to suggest that Trump is doing anything for his own benefit end quote. [00:05:00] But if the media reports are accurate, while the aircraft will belong to the United States government, at first, the ownership will then be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation.

So it prompts. The reasonable question, I think it's a reasonable question whether the aircraft is truly a gift to the United States government or Trump himself. Now many Trump opponents and even some of his supporters, like Laura Loomer are saying that this is corruption. Pure and simple. Haven't heard of Laura Loomer? Well, she's a staunch MAGA conservative investigative journalist and host. Of Loomer Unleashed and on Twitter, she has approximately 1.6 million followers She posted on Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it, the following quote, how are we supposed to ever see the United States under the Trump administration, designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization if the [00:06:00] United States is going to accept.

A $400 million jet from Qatar to fly the United States president and his staff around on end quote, she goes on to note, and I have not independently verified this to be clear, quote Qatar funds. Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood end quote, Luer claims that it's going to be hard for the administration to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and obliterate Iranian proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah.

When Qatar funds the Muslim Brotherhood Harbors Hamas and the United States just accepted a $400 million jet from Qatar. Those are her words. I have not independently verified the facts that undergird her comments, but other Trump supporters point to Attorney General, Pam Bondi and her seal of approval.

See they asked Attorney General Bondi if [00:07:00] this is a lawful gift to accept or whether it is lawful to accept this gift. I should say a B. C. News reports that the Attorney General and White House counsel's office concluded that this gift is legally permissible because it is being handed to the United States Air Force and not the president himself.

I call bs if we consider the intent and purpose of the foreign emoluments clause according to the Heritage Foundation, by the way, the Heritage Foundation is the same organization that authored Project 2025, and it is undoubtedly a. A conservative organization. Well, the Heritage Foundation states the framers intended the emoluments clause to protect the Republican character of American political institutions.

The Heritage Foundation cites Federalist 22, written by Alexander Hamilton where he said. One of the weak signs of [00:08:00] republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too early. An inlet to foreign corruption. End quote. Now, you might have heard of the Federalist Papers. Just as a quick aside, what were they?

Well, while the states were debating whether to ratify the Constitution after the constitutional convention, Alexander Hamilton, John J and James Madison wrote a series of papers called The Federalist Papers to gather public support. To ratify the Constitution. So the Federalist papers actually show kind of key thoughts of what the framers were thinking when they drafted the Constitution.

Now the framers saw, at that time, the framers saw Louis the 16th who had a custom. Presenting expensive gifts to departing foreign ministers who had signed treaties with France. [00:09:00] In 1780, king Louis the 16th gave Arthur Lee a portrait of the king set in diamonds above a gold snuff box. Five years later, the king gave Benjamin Franklin something similar.

And the King of Spain gave founder John Jay horse. Now all of these gifts were reported to Congress and according to the Heritage Foundation, which in each case, Congress expressly consented to their receipt. But the Heritage Foundation goes further, it states, quote, wary of the possibility. Such gestures might unduly influence American officials in their dealings with foreign states.

The framers institutionalized the practice of requiring congressional consent. End quote before any gift from a foreign state could be accepted. Plain and simple, the clause in the Constitution is to protect the American [00:10:00] people from corrupt public officials by precluding the acceptance of any gifts from a foreign state unless the people's branch AKA, Congress consents to the receipt of that gift.

So corruption. We'll talk more about corruption in general after this message.

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 Alright, welcome back. Let's begin by defining corruption. Webster defines corruption as dishonest or illegal behavior, especially by powerful people. An inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means such as bribery. Or a departure from the original or what is pure or correct.

What about political corruption specifically? Normally, I shy away from citing Wikipedia because it can be incorrect, but in this instance, we're just going to cite a definition, so I'll rely on it. According to Wikipedia, political corruption is the use of powers by government officials or their contacts for illegitimate private gain.

The term political corruption is often used when referring to governments of underdeveloped countries or [00:12:00] authoritarian regimes like President Putin in Russia. But the United States isn't immune to corruption. In fact, it has flourished. Corruption has flourished in the United States over the course of history, and according to a paper prepared by Vito Tanzi, who is now an economist and professor at American University in Washington dc Well, this paper was published by the International Monetary Fund. I discovered it while I was doing the research for this episode, and he says, professor Vito Tanzi says, not all acts of corruption result in bribes. In this way, it all turns on whether the public official.

Abuses his or her power for a private benefit. Now, the International Monetary Fund also states that in many instances, bribes can be disguised as gifts. A bribe implies reciprocity. While a true gift should not. Professor Tanzi classified acts of corruption, and according [00:13:00] to his paper, corruption can take several forms.

For example, number one, it could be bureaucratic or political. Two. It could be cost reducing to the briber or benefit enhancing. Number three, it could be initiated by the briber or the person accepting the bribe. Number four, it can be coercive or collusive.

Number five, it could be centralized or decentralized. Number six, it could be predictable or arbitrary. And number seven. It could involve cash payments or not. Harvard Law professor Matthew Stevenson has explored political corruption in his research and has written extensively about it. So for this part, I rely heavily on Professor Stevenson's work.

According to Stevenson, corruption was a serious problem in the United States in the late 18 hundreds and into the 19 hundreds. He claims that the corruption of that era is similar to contemporary corruption. Stevenson claims quote. There is a lot [00:14:00] of corruption associated with political machines and political machines Provide jobs for supporters who then use those positions to generate elicit income for themselves and their party bosses.

Mobilize voters to support the candidates backed by the machine. Stevenson continues that while the political machines tended to dominate local governments, the practice of buying and selling public offices or the using of government appointments to purchase political support was widespread at the national level as well.

For example, wealthy business interests corrupted politicians to receive favorable treatment by the government. How? Well, typically legislators accepted bribes. You might recall that a few months ago, former United States Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was sentenced to 11 years in prison for bribery and other offenses.

I. US attorney Danielle [00:15:00] Sassoon said at the time, the sentences imposed today result from an egregious abuse of power by Senator Menendez at the highest levels of the legislative branch of the federal government. Menendez used his position as a United States Senator to help his co-conspirators and a foreign government in exchange for bribes like cash, gold, and a luxury car.

According to the evidence provided at his trial, Menendez worked on the behalf of the Egyptian government to advance their interests while serving as get this, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Now something tangible that Menendez did while in office to benefit Egypt. Well, according to the evidence, he wrote his colleagues to persuade the United States Senate to release a hold on $300 million in foreign aid to Egypt. [00:16:00] That is a concrete example of corruption in the modern times and right here in the United States, again, the United States isn't immune to corruption.

So how do we tackle corruption during the late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds? Potentially that is informative for how we tackle it today. Well, according to Stevenson, first, the press played a significant role. The press's role in a democratic republic is to, among other things, bring light to corruption.

In this way, corrupt officials often attack the press because the press is highlighting their corruption. They, the press is reporting on their corruption. Stevenson also says that citizens played an important part. He referred to them as citizen activists. And first citizens can vote corrupt officials out of office.

Second, citizens can demand change from their representatives.

Now, I'll add a point to Professor Stevenson's [00:17:00] work here, culture. Culture is what I'll add. The press can highlight corruption. Citizens can demand change from their representatives by exercising their First Amendment rights, for instance. But ultimately, I think it comes down to culture. Our culture must reject corruption.

We must call it when we see it, and perhaps more importantly, when it is brought to our attention, we must act, we must denounce it. We must hold corrupt public officials accountable either through the justice system, the political system, or the electoral system. Lemme break this down. Consider the three systems of accountability.

Our justice system, criminal charges. Just like in Senator Menendez case, we charge corrupt officials with corruption and then we penalize them accordingly. Our political system, we remove corrupt public officials, either by pressuring them to resign like in Senator [00:18:00] Menendez case or by impeaching them.

And of course we have our electoral system where we, the voters just vote them out of office. Now with the Attorney General kind of signing off on the acceptance of this $400 million plane, I think it's safe to say that we won't see our justice system hold corrupt officials to account, at least not during this Trump administration.

That leaves us with the political and electoral systems. For as long as the Republicans control both the House and the Senate, I doubt Congress will commence congressional investigations or initiate impeachment proceedings. Against the Trump administration.

In fact, the impeachment clause, I just wanna highlight this, in the Constitution, expressly calls bribery out as an impeachable offense. The Constitution's framers condemned corruption to such an extent as to [00:19:00] put one corrupt act, bribery, on the express list of impeachable offenses. So that leaves us with the electoral system.

We simply must exercise our right to vote. Of course, there will be Trump supporters who argue that this isn't corruption, that this is purely the left sounding the alarm Once again. We've heard that, right? Professor Stevenson, who again, has studied political corruption throughout his career, says he perhaps the biggest takeaway here is that the Trump administration and President Trump and his family in particular disregard traditional norms regarding the separation of public and private functions. He notes that while most of his research has focused on corruption in foreign countries, it's really striking and troubling how much the Trump family and the Trump administration resembles these corrupt leaders we've seen in places like [00:20:00] Thailand and the Philippines and South Africa.

End quote. But Professor Stevenson is from Harvard, right? And aren't Harvard and President Trump battling it out over federal funding and grants? The Trump administration has frozen all federal funding to Harvard. And Harvard is suing them well. So yes they are. They are battling. Harvard has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking the restoration of federal funding on the First Amendment grounds, a topic that I'll likely cover in a future episode, but the mere fact that Professor Stevenson is from Harvard does not change his research.

He has been writing about corruption in the political systems for years, well before Trump rose to political power. Now the United States has been fighting corruption abroad for decades. The State Department, for example, the state department's website, states that corruption is one of the most pervasive types of crimes.

It fuels transnational crime, [00:21:00] it wastes public resources. It destabilizes countries, and it impedes good governance. The University of Southern California's Price School of Public Policy published a short article on recent corruption scandals in the United States.

In that piece, a professor of the Price School of Public policy states that corruption is a human condition. So it will always be an issue to grapple with according to another professor from the same school, this is because as humans, we are simply incentivized to act in accordance with our own survival.

This prompts the question, I think. How do we prevent or mitigate corruption? Well, from a systemic perspective, I think I'll leave that question to the experts of which I am not. Perhaps economists, political scientists or ethicists, they can opine on how we tackle it from a systemic perspective.

Instead, I'll limit my [00:22:00] commentary to my area of expertise, the constitution. And in this case, the presidency. Two landmark Supreme Court cases come to mind here. First, Citizens United versus the Federal Elections Commission or FEC and second, Trump, the United States, specifically the criminal immunity case decided last summer.

For those listeners who are unfamiliar with either case, lemme just quickly describe what happened in each case, and I'll tie this all together here in a second.

At issue in Citizens United were campaign finance laws, and specifically, Citizens United as an organization argued that campaign finance laws that limited political contributions from corporations' general treasury funds. It's ordinary bank accounts. Were unconstitutional as violations of the First Amendment's free speech clause.

The core of Citizens United, the core of their [00:23:00] argument was that money is political speech and campaign expenditures are expressive Speech-- expressing political messages or advancing a particular candidate in this way according to Citizens United, the more money simply means the more support for a political campaign or candidate.

And the Supreme Court ultimately agreed with Citizens United. See, citizens United wanted to distribute a film about Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Citizens United wanted to pay cable companies to make the film available for free through a video on demand service. Think about old form streaming.

But the Federal Election Campaign Act prohibited electioneering communications within 30 days of a primary election, or 60 days of a general election.

Now, this United States Supreme Court ruled that this prohibition of electioneering communications has what [00:24:00] has been recognized throughout First Amendment jurisprudence as a chilling effect on political speech, and thus, it is a violation of the free speech clause. Here, the court disagreed with the FEC.

The FEC, the Federal Elections Commission argued that the prohibition was necessary to prevent corruption or at minimum the appearance of corruption. And the Supreme Court said, no, this is, this anti-corruption purpose is not sufficient to limit the speech of Citizens United. Now, justice Stevens wrote a dissent in that case, he said.

The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions. He denounced the majority's claim that the appearance of corruption will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy. So in other words, justice Stevens and the dissent said the appearance of corruption [00:25:00] might cause the electorate to lose faith.

It's been 15 years since the court decided Citizens United, so I'll let you judge for yourself whether the majority was correct or incorrect. Whether the appearance of corruption has caused, will caused or has not caused the electorate to lose faith in democracy. The other Supreme Court case that I mentioned is Trump the United States. The case where the court said that the president of the United States has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for any official acts taken, where the president acts according to an exclusive and preclusive constitutional authority that he is entitled to, at minimum, presumptive immunity for all other official acts.

Such as when he acts under the legal authority granted to him by Congress via a statute, and the case also said that he has no immunity for any [00:26:00] unofficial acts. I've mentioned this case before on this podcast, but at least with respect to corruption,

how might this case be emboldening Trump to accept a $400 million plane from Qatar? Well, let's say for the sake of this podcast, you may disagree with me on this, let's say that this is a corrupt act, the acceptance of this $400 million plane, and let's assume. That the next administration might investigate Trump his administration for alleged corruption. Normally, the threat of criminal investigation and prosecution might act as a deterrent, right? People don't commit crimes because of the punishment that may follow, but if we take criminal prosecution off of the table because you have immunity, that deterrent goes away.

So the Supreme Court has created a situation where the Trump administration might be thinking, well, let's just accept [00:27:00] the palace of the skies, this $400 million plane from Qatar, because even if we are charged and prosecuted by the next administration, we're immune. We're immune because this is an official act.

At least I think they would make this argument made under the president's broad foreign relations authority, granted to him by the United States Constitution, and perhaps in a hypothetical world where Trump, the United States was never decided, where the President of the United States was never granted any form of criminal immunity.

Perhaps we wouldn't be having this discussion about a $400 million plane.

My last thought on today's episode is while I believe that accepting a $400 million plane from the Qatari Royal family is unconstitutional, as it lends itself to corruption, that it is against the foreign emoluments clause, many Trump supporters and opponents will disagree with me on [00:28:00] this.

Many might conclude that this is not corruption, that this is perfectly acceptable for Trump to accept a Boeing 7, 4 7 from Qatar because he personally isn't receiving it. Rather, the Air Force gets the plane. Well, my response to this is if we are arguing that this technically isn't corruption, doesn't that show the mere impropriety of the whole situation?

In other words, don't we want our public officials to act in such a way that doesn't even raise the question about whether an act by that public official is corrupt or not? And that's where we'll leave it for today. Thank you for joining us once again on the Discourse Pod.

That's it for today's episode of Discourse. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the conversation. You can catch future episodes [00:29:00] of discourse wherever you get your podcasts. If you found this discussion insightful, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who value thoughtful analysis over the noise.

You can also join the conversation by visiting discourse pod.org and following me on x and blue sky at Prof Unger for more insights and updates. Until next time, keep thinking critically, stay curious and engage with respect. We'll see you soon.

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