We the People: Constitution has strict rules for emoluments and gifts

In the We the People series, The Spokesman-Review examines a question from the Naturalization Test immigrants must pass to become United States citizens.

Today’s question: What is one thing the Constitution does?

As the document that formed the U.S. government, defined its parts and set down the rights of its people, the Constitution does many things.

One way to look at the Constitution is that it tells different parts of the government what they must do, what they can do and what they can’t do.

One of the things government officials can’t do that is much in the news recently has to do with accepting “emoluments” – a word that may have been more familiar to the framers of the Constitution in the late 18th century than it is to the general public in 2025.

Article 1, Section 9, which sets out a series of dos and don’ts for Congress, lists as its final prohibitions:

“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

That clause is mentioned frequently in connection with a proposal by the Qatari government to give the United States a luxurious 747 that President Trump could use for Air Force One.

Article 2, Section 1, which sets down the eligibility for being president, the rules for electing and removing one and the length of a term, has a clause that says the president is compensated for that term and “shall not receive … any other Emolument from the United States or any of them.”

An emolument is essentially a bribe, something of value that could be given by a king or other member of the royalty of one country to an official of another country in exchange for some action or favor, according to Cornell Clayton, director of Washington State University’s Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service.

There was a common practice in Europe for kings and other royalty to give emoluments to ambassadors and other officials from other countries in return for favors.

It was considered “a corruption of the Old World,” Clayton said.

The Articles of Confederation also had prohibitions against officials receiving emoluments, similar to those in the Constitution that replaced it.

James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, had studied the establishment of the Dutch republic in the previous century, which also prohibited accepting emoluments, said Hugh Spitzer, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Washington.

The framers of the Constitution were worried about corruption and by the prospect of government officers being bribed by foreign governments, Spitzer said.

In Federalist No. 22, Alexander Hamilton suggested that the leaders of a republic might be more susceptible to foreign bribes and corruption than a king.

“A hereditary monarch, though often disposed to sacrifice his subjects to his ambitions, has so great a personal in the government and the external glory of the nation, that it is not easy for a foreign power to give him an equivalent for what he would sacrifice by treachery to the state,” Hamilton argued.

But a republic, which pulls its leaders from “the mass of the community,” could find itself with people in office who “may find compensations for betraying their trusts, which … may appear to exceed the proportion of interest they have in the common stock and to overbalance the obligations of duty,” Hamilton wrote.

There were more examples of republics being corrupted by foreign influences but relatively few examples of “this species of royal prostitution,” he wrote.

Kings did, however, often bribe members of their own parliaments with hereditary titles or land grants to get things they wanted from those bodies, Spitzer said. Prohibitions against accepting foreign titles is part of that Article 1 clause.

An emolument suggests a quid pro quo, but the Qatari 747 is being described by President Trump as a gift, with no strings attached.

Gifts from a foreign king or prince – and the emir of Qatar would fall under that description, Spitzer said – also are banned under Article 1 of the Constitution unless they are approved by Congress.

Critics of the proposal note the Qatari 747 is a large gift, valued at $400 million. Congress has approved large foreign gifts in the past, including the Statue of Liberty, which was a gift from the people of France to the United States.

The estimated cost of a project like the statue in 1886 was $250,000, which would be about $101 million in today’s economy, according to the online Measuring Worth calculator.

Some critics argue that accepting the gift of the Qatari 747 would cost more than the plane’s state value because it would have to be taken apart and refitted before it could be used by the president. That was true to a certain extent with the Statue of Liberty, because preparing the island and building a base for the statue cost $270,000, or about $109 million in today’s economy.

One difference, however, is that the work on the base and the island was mostly covered by public donations, not American taxpayers. Congress would have to approve the gift of the 747 if it is made to the president or at least the cost of the upgrades if it is given to Defense Department.

Even though both houses of Congress are controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, some of them have expressed concerns over those costs if the jet is accepted.

Unlike some parts of the Constitution, there are not many court rulings to that cover the foreign emoluments clause, Clayton said.

During Trump’s first term, some members of Congress filed a challenge to a practice of some foreign governments and lobbyists paying high rates for rooms or meetings in a Washington, D.C., hotel owned by one of his companies. That suit was dismissed because a court ruled they couldn’t prove they were harmed by that practice.

A separate lawsuit filed by some hotel owners in the D.C. area, who theoretically could show they were harmed by unfair competition, was pending in January 2021. It was dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court as moot after Trump left office for his first term.

A question about the foreign emoluments clause arose at the beginning of former President Barack Obama’s first term when he received the Nobel Peace Prize, which came with a cash award of about $1.4 million, Clayton said.

A U.S. Justice Department memorandum said it was not covered by the clause because the award came from the Nobel Committee, which is not a “king, prince or foreign state.” Obama donated the money to charity.