Chris Murphy Slams Trump's 'Corruption' After US-Qatari Arms Deal 'In Coordination With' 747 Gift

Forbes Breaking News

During remarks on the Senate floor Monday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) spoke about President Trump's dealings with Gulf States.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Madam President. The U.S. Constitution and the American people give the American

00:07President vast power. The power to decide how billions of dollars are spent, the power to

00:14oversee the entire federal criminal justice system, the power to sell arms around the world,

00:20to deploy millions of American soldiers, to negotiate peace treaties. We give him these

00:26powers, the Constitution gives the President these powers, so that he uses them on our behalf

00:32to deploy that vast power of the American presidency to increase our quality of life,

00:39to protect the American people. We place immense trust in the President not to abuse these incredible

00:48authorities that are given to him. But Donald Trump is abusing that authority in ways that honestly

00:58shock the conscience. Donald Trump is using the power of his office not to help or protect us,

01:05but to enrich himself and his family. He is doing it publicly, brazenly, out in the open. He is,

01:14in effect, daring us, specifically daring the legislative branch, the co-equal branch, to stop him.

01:24Nearly three weeks ago, news broke that the White House had dialed up one of our key allies in the

01:33Middle East, the government of Qatar, and it asked that the Qataris give the President a luxury jet that

01:39is reportedly worth upwards of $400 million. Now, the nicest jet that I have ever been on is Air Force

01:47One, and it's really nice. But the jet that Trump wants to make Air Force One, that he's asking for

01:55from the Qataris, makes Air Force One, the current version, look like a tenement house. The Qataris jet

02:03that he is asking for. Its interior is designed by a famed French designer, complete with a flowing

02:09grand staircase, sculpted ceilings, plush carpeting, leather couches, gold furnishings. The plane has been

02:16called the world's most luxurious private jet. It includes nine bathrooms, five kitchens, swanky

02:25lounges, and a master bedroom suite. And the arrangement that Trump proposed to the Qataris

02:32would briefly pass the jet through U.S. government hands, but only as reported for just a year or two

02:41before it would end up belonging personally to Donald Trump. The U.S. government would essentially

02:47be a straw purchaser. The real owner of the jet, for all practical purposes, would be Donald Trump.

02:55Now, this kind of gift, a $400 million luxury jet, it has no precedent in American history, no

03:01president has ever asked for, never mind been given, a $400 million gift from a foreign nation. Why?

03:11Well, because presidents know that that's crossing a line. That is a massive abuse of their power.

03:19The leverage that presidents have over other countries that they could use to ask for millions

03:25of dollars in gifts. It's supposed to be used to benefit the nation's security, not to enrich

03:31themselves. But also, it's just illegal. There is a very specific clause in the Constitution that forbids

03:37this kind of gift from a foreign government to a president. And this body is supposed to be in charge

03:45of helping to enforce the Constitution.

03:48Our founders wrote that clause into the Constitution because they worried about this exact situation

03:55where a president is using his authority like a monarch or a king to make himself the richest person in

04:05the world. Now, the Qatar government feels like it had little choice but to say yes when asked for

04:13this $400 million gift. Again, briefly to the U.S. government, but really for all practical purposes

04:21to the president. They felt like they had no choice precisely because an American president has so much

04:27power. They have so much leverage, especially over a vulnerable country in the Middle East. In this case,

04:35Qatar really needs to keep the United States on its side. Middle East politics, they shift really

04:39quickly. And during Trump's first term, when the Qataris were not close to Trump, they paid a price.

04:45They found themselves badly and dangerously isolated in the region. Saudi Arabia and the UAE,

04:52if you remember, effectively ganged up to blockade Qatar. And Trump gave that move implicit consent.

04:58Qatar, frankly, is willing to pay a very high price to avoid that fate again. But Qatar also has things

05:05that it wants from the United States. No Middle East country has ever been allowed to buy MQ-9 Reaper

05:13drones. These are the most lethal armed drone that America makes. We have previously judged that the

05:20region is just too volatile to allow any nation to possess the Reaper. And arguably, there's an arms

05:27control regime that doesn't allow us to transfer that technology. But Qatar wanted to break that

05:33precedent. Of course they did. They wanted to be the first nation to have the Reaper technology. And

05:38Trump seemed willing to go along. So a $400 million gift to the president, again, that the president

05:43was asking for, it's a relatively small price to pay for that kind of military edge over your rivals in

05:50the region. But there was one more reason that Qatar had no choice but to give Trump, or at least they

05:57felt they had no choice but to give Trump this wildly illegal gift. Because Trump had made it clear to

06:05the whole region, to the whole of the Gulf region in the Middle East, that he was for sale. And that

06:13preferential American treatment was for sale. And if Qatar didn't pay, another country would.

06:20Qatar wasn't going to be protected, frankly, by a collective refusal of Trump's extortion in the

06:29region. And they had only to look next door to the United Arab Emirates to see how price, how high the

06:36price was getting to win Trump's affection. At the exact moment that Trump was leaning on Qatar to give him

06:45the luxury plane, he was also leaning on UAE to give him not a $400 million gift, but a $2 billion gift.

06:56And he didn't have to lean hard. Just before the Qataris committed to give Trump the plane,

07:02an investment firm backed by the Emirati government and chaired by the Emirati government's national

07:08security divisor shocked the world and announced that it would use Trump's brand new stablecoin. This

07:14is a form of cryptocurrency. In a $2 billion investment deal that this investment fund,

07:24essentially an arm of the UAE government, was doing. And because of that $2 billion deal,

07:30overnight, Trump's stablecoin became one of the five largest stablecoins in the world, massively

07:37inflating the president's wealth due to this one single investment. Now, this wasn't an ordinary

07:44investment decision. Out of all the stablecoin companies in the world, the Emiratis chose what

07:50at the time was a brand new, relatively small crypto company run by two people who had very little

07:58background in the industry. Why? To put money directly into the pocket of Donald Trump. On the website of

08:06World Liberty Financial, that's the company that is issuing the Trump coin, they don't hide the fact

08:11that this isn't the Trump kids that own the business. On the website, it states 60% of this

08:22company, World Liberty Financial, is owned by an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump. But it gets

08:30even more corrupt because World Liberty Financial's other co-founder is a guy named Zach Whitcoff,

08:36who, not coincidentally, is the son of Steve Whitcoff, Trump's top Middle East advisor.

08:45The Trumps could have picked anybody in the world to run this stablecoin business with.

08:50But they chose the son of the Middle East envoy, just so that when they were going around asking

08:55for money in the region, it was crystal clear that if you were doing business with World Liberty

09:01Financial, you were doing business with the people in the Trump administration who make all the

09:05decisions about the Middle East. So in one fell swoop, the Emiratis can put money into the family

09:10that controls the White House and the family that deploys and decides Middle East policy.

09:16Now, just like the Qataris, the Emiratis want something in return, too. Their ask was for the U.S. to remove

09:25restrictions on selling the most advanced American-made computer chips to the UAE. The restrictions have

09:32been in place under Republican and Democratic administrations for really good reason. The

09:36UAE has a very close, too close relationship with China. And the U.S. is always rightly worried that if

09:44we gave advanced technology to UAE, it would pretty quickly potentially fall into the hands of the

09:50Chinese. Now, this would be really bad, especially regarding these microchips, these computer chips,

09:55because these chips power the most advanced and proprietary American AI systems. Losing these chips

10:02to China could cost us the lead to China on the global AI race. The UAE also wanted the United States

10:10to look the other way. Well, they helped fund a death spiral civil war in Sudan. The UAE is the main supplier

10:19of weapons to the worst of the two parties that are involved in the brutal, catastrophic, deadly

10:24civil war in Sudan. And they want the United States to keep giving them weapons, most recently asking

10:31for a resupply of Chinook helicopters, even as they use their military prowess to destroy Sudan.

10:39Now, the end of this chapter of the story will not shock you. In coordination with the $400 million

10:46luxury plane and the $2 billion investment in Trump crypto, Qatar got sign-off on buying the Reaper

10:54drones. And Steve Witkoff, father and co-owner of World, father of the co-owner of World Liberty

11:00Financial, marched over to UAE right before the president was showing up himself and announced

11:06that the United States would, in fact, magically lift those restrictions on the microchips.

11:12And just as unsurprisingly, Trump announced that he'll sell the Chinooks to Abu Dhabi with no

11:18requirement that they stop fueling the war in Sudan. The blatant exchange of U.S. national security

11:26secrets, our most sensitive drone technology, and our most sensitive chip technology,

11:33in exchange for cash into Donald Trump's pocket, is perhaps the most brazenly corrupt act in the

11:43history of the American presidency. And we cannot normalize it just because he is doing it out in

11:51the open in public. The Senate, the Senate, which is given the responsibility by the Constitution to be

12:00a co-equal branch with the president. We have independent responsibility to uphold and protect

12:05the Constitution, to set American foreign policy. We cannot pretend this is not happening.

12:12We cannot look the other way while the entire moral foundation of our foreign policy is being shattered.

12:20Republicans can't ignore this just because the president is their party's leader. We have that

12:26independent obligation to protect the Constitution, which clearly says that these gifts are illegal,

12:32whether they're going to a Democratic president or a Republican president. We have a responsibility

12:36to our taxpayers to stop a president from immorally enriching himself using the power we give him to

12:43help himself instead of helping us. What makes this moment so dangerous

12:49is that both UAE and Qatar, but especially Qatar, are key partners of the United States. They aren't our

13:00adversaries. They are our allies. They're imperfect allies, but they are our allies. In fact, I've been

13:06down on this floor in the past arguing on behalf of Qatar and the U.S.-Qatar relationship when other

13:14senators have tried to denigrate the Qatari's contributions to regional peace. The Qatari's

13:20have been a critical partner of ours on so many important issues. It's worth saying that.

13:28There's no way that we would have been able to evacuate 12, excuse me, 124,000 people from

13:34Afghanistan on the eve of the Taliban takeover without Qatar's help. The Qatari's today host thousands

13:43of U.S. troops at Al-Udeed Air Force Base. It's the largest base in the region. The Qatari's are

13:50critical mediators who have helped us send back-channel messages to secure the release of

13:55American hostages or negotiate peace deals. There's no question that Qatar is a country that helps

14:03stabilize the region and often is indispensable in protecting U.S. interests overseas. So I want to

14:11cultivate and strengthen that important relationship. I honor that the work that the United States and

14:17UAE does all around the region to try to track down and hold accountable terrorists. These are real

14:24partnerships. But our relationship with Qatar and the UAE, it can't be a corrupt relationship.

14:33We can't sell drones to Qatar, our friend, if our friend is willing to take part in Trump's

14:42corruption. We cannot sell weapons to the UAE, our ally, if our ally is willing to take part in

14:49Trump's corruption. We'll have a chance this week to make this clear, that the United States Senate

14:57will not facilitate, will not grease the wheels of Trump's corruption of our foreign policy. We can do

15:05that by voting to block these two arms sales, to Qatar and the UAE. Not permanently, but until both

15:14countries commit to deny Trump's requests for personal enrichment as part of the bilateral relationship.

15:24That's why Senators Van Hollen, Kane, Schatz and Sanders have joined me in two resolutions to

15:33disapproval for those Reaper drone sales and the Chinook sale. And we'll have a vote on these two

15:39resolutions as early as this week. President Trump has declared that U.S. foreign policy is for sale.

15:46And the opening bids from two of the richest nations in the world is a $2 billion investment

15:54in Trump's crypto company from the UAE and a $400 million luxury plane, essentially for the

16:02president's permanent personal use. At the exact same moment that Trump is trying to push a bill

16:09through this Congress that is going to ruin a lot of people's lives, cutting off their health care or

16:13leaving kids without food at night. He's making himself even richer by trading American national

16:22security policy for gifts. And to make it worse, trading away U.S. national security secrets in

16:31exchange. The net result is an American public that is poorer and weaker and less secure and a president

16:40who is richer. It's corrupt. It's corrupt. We've never, ever in the history of this country

16:48allowed for a president to do this. Never in the 250 years that our republic has been on the earth

16:57has a president ever asked another nation to enrich himself in this way in exchange for preferential

17:08treatment from the U.S. taxpayers. If you are a Republican or Democratic senator, you have to see

17:15this as unprecedented, as terrible for our nation, as corruption. American foreign policy should not

17:24be for sale. If we let these arms sales go through, we are greasing the wheels of that corruption.

17:30If we vote for these resolutions of disapproval, at least we have a shot to stop it.

17:35I yield the floor.

Category

Transcript

Recommended