Motion to Discharge--S.J. Res. 54

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, pursuant to section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 54, as provided under the previous order.

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am bringing before the Senate an opportunity for us to take a stand, to take a stand against the corruption of American foreign policy.

The Senate will take a vote in just a moment to deny the President the ability to move forward with two arms sales--one to Qatar and one to the United Arab Emirates.

I believe that this Senate should join Republicans and Democrats together in saying that any country that is willing to pay the President personally, to enrich our President personally, in order to receive favorable treatment from the United States of America in its foreign policy or to receive national security secrets from the United States of America shouldn't be able to do business as usual with this Congress or with this country.

I want to tell you a story that is as heartbreaking as it is aggravating. We give the American President enormous power, and particularly we give the President enormous power when it comes to managing the foreign relations of this country. The President decides where we send arms. The President gets to negotiate peace treaties. The President decides how millions of troops are deployed all around the world. We trust that the President is going to use those powers for good, that the President is going to use those authorities to protect the United States of America.

But they are vast powers. They are immense powers. So there is always the potential that those powers are going to be used for corrupt purposes, that instead of using those authorities in order to gain concessions from other nations that benefit the broad American public or benefit American national security, the President may use those powers in order to enrich himself personally.

Our Founding Fathers actually thought a lot about this problem because they had watched their monarch. They had watched the King of England use the powers that he had in order--not to protect the British people but to amass enormous wealth. He used those powers both to control dissents and protests domestically, but he also used those powers in order to compel other nations and actors inside the empire to pay him tribute.

President Trump has decided that he is going to use the powers that we have given him to demand the same kind of tribute that Kings and monarchs demanded.

The reason we have to stand together today to vote against these arm sales to Qatar and UAE is because unfortunately these two countries, who are admittedly often allies, important allies of the United States, have decided to comply with President Trump's request to pay him that tribute.

Shortly before the President went to the Middle East, he did not dispense to the region his Secretary of State. Instead, he dispensed to the region his business partners. Just before the President made his first major foreign trip to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and to Qatar, he sent his son and their business partner--who, not coincidentally, happens to be the son of Trump's Middle East Envoy--to the United Arab Emirates.

Their request was pretty simple. Their request was not that the UAE do something that would be in the interest of collective American security; their request was that the UAE invest $2 billion in Trump's new crypto business--in particular, his stablecoin venture. This is the President of the United States going to the UAE and asking a foreign government to invest $2 billion in his personal business. The company is called World Liberty Financial. On World Liberty Financial's website, it says the majority of the company is owned by Donald J. Trump.

This was a pretty exceptional request to make because his crypto business was brand new. At the time, it was a pretty minor player. So a $2 billion investment from a country like UAE would vault World Liberty Financial into the stratosphere. And, in fact, it did. When the UAE complied with that corrupt request, World Liberty Financial--the stablecoin that it issues became the fifth biggest stablecoin in the world overnight.

Now, the UAE felt like it had to comply with the President's request because they had things they wanted from the United States.

First, they wanted a continuation of arm sales, including the sale of Chinook helicopters that we will be voting on today. But they wanted something more specific, something that they weren't able to get from the first Trump administration or from the Biden administration. They wanted some of our most vital, most significant national security secrets. They wanted to be able to get their hands on computer chip technology, the kind of technology that will power the next generation of AI.

We as a nation--again, based on bipartisan consensus--had been unwilling to give UAE that technology because it is a fairly open secret that the UAE has a very close, very cozy relationship with China, and there was a very real worry--there still is a real worry-- that that technology, if transferred to the UAE, would be quickly transferred to China, allowing China to be able to outpace us, to outrun us in the race to advanced AI.

But the UAE knew that there was a way to get what they wanted, that there was a way to change the policy of the United States, and it was a $2 billion investment in Trump's business.

Not coincidentally, just weeks after they announced they were putting $2 billion into Trump's crypto business, his father--who, again not coincidentally, is Trump's Middle East Envoy--went back to the region and announced that they would be moving forward with the transfer of these computer chips to the UAE--$2 billion into the Trump family's pockets and the most sensitive American technology that had been previously banned from going to the UAE, being sent to the UAE.

Apparently, we didn't make any demands that the UAE divest itself from its security relationship with China. Instead, what we demanded was that the UAE make a $2 billion investment in Donald Trump's business.

As you can imagine, once the word was out that the Trump administration was for sale, other countries decided to get into the mix. Donald Trump barely had taken a look at a luxury plane that the country of Qatar owned--reportedly the most luxurious plane in the world: gold plating, a spiral staircase designed by a famed French designer--and the President wanted it personally. So he dispensed the Department of Defense, apparently, to go to the Qataris and asked them to give him the plane, just like he had asked the UAE for a $2 billion investment in his business--a $2 billion investment that nobody else was going to give him except for a foreign power over which Donald Trump had leverage because of his role as President of the United States.

He went to the Qataris and asked them to give him this jet because he liked it, because it was fancy, because he thought he deserved it, and he knew they couldn't say no. Why? Because the Qataris also have specific asks of the United States. More broadly, they were burned during Trump's first term. When the Saudis and the Emiratis ganged up on the Qataris and effectively implemented an economic and political blockade on Qatar, the Trump administration, in the first term, effectively took the side of the Emiratis and the Saudis. That was devastating for the Qataris.

So first and foremost, they wanted to make sure that never again would Trump abandon them if there was a contest like that in the Middle East. So when he asked for the plane, just based upon their desire to make sure they did not get abandoned again, they felt they had to say yes.

But they also wanted an arms sale, and the arms sale they wanted was a groundbreaking arms sale. Never before has the United States been willing to send our most sensitive drone technology into the Middle East, weren't willing to transfer our most sensitive computer chips. We also weren't willing to send our most sensitive drone technology.

Qatar wanted that drone technology and once again, just like the UAE knew that they could get our most sensitive computer chip technology if they sent $2 billion to Donald Trump's business ventures, Qatar, having learned that lesson, realized that if they gave a massive gift to the President, maybe he would break with a bipartisan precedent not to send this sensitive drone technology into the Middle East.

Guess what. They got what they wanted. The President has agreed to move forward with sending our most sensitive drone technology, the Predator drones, into the Middle East, selling them to Qatar. It is not a coincidence that they are also willing to send him this jet.

I had the chance this morning to talk to the Secretary of Defense about this jet because one of the claims the administration has made is that the jet is actually being sent to the U.S. Government. But we learned some important facts this morning. It is true that right now the U.S. Government is buying two new Air Force Ones, and it is true that this contract is expensive and it is taking a little bit longer than both Republicans and Democrats had hoped, but both those planes from Boeing are due for delivery sometime at the end of Trump's term.

What we learned today is that this plane that is being gifted temporarily to the U.S. Government is going to take several years to retrofit and will become available essentially at the exact same time that the two Boeing planes are made available.

So we don't actually need this plane as a new Air Force One because the Boeings are still under contract, and they are going to be ready simultaneously. But the Secretary of Defense is committed to accepting the gift of this plane and then spending upwards of $1 billion of taxpayer money in order to retrofit this plane--$1 billion that we don't need because we are already spending $4 billion on the two Boeings.

So now, instead of having two Air Force Ones, we are going to have three Air Force Ones. We don't need three Air Force Ones. But Trump is solving this problem because what he has said is that, when he leaves office, he is taking this Air Force One with him.

Now, that has never ever happened before. We have never just given a President of the United States a gift on the way out the door. But we are going to spend $1 billion getting this plane ready. It, effectively, will not be used as an actual Air Force One because it won't be completed until the very end of his term. And then Trump is taking the plane, apparently, to his Presidential library, but who knows.

And so this gift is actually going to Donald Trump, not to the American taxpayers. The Department of Defense is, effectively, a straw purchaser. It will hold the plane for a couple years; it will spend your taxpayer dollars to retrofit the plane; and then the plane will just be given to Donald Trump to take with him in his post-Presidency.

So $2 billion from the UAE into the President's crypto venture, a plane that, when all is said and done, is probably going to be worth about $1.5 billion, straight transferred to Donald Trump personally-- this is unprecedented in the history of the United States of America. Never has a President of the United States, while in office, solicited, sought, and accepted billions of dollars' worth of investments in his private companies or gifts to him and his family.

Remember, our Founding Fathers thought about this problem. They worried about this exact situation: a President using the vast power of the article II authorities he is given in order to trade favorable American treatment for foreign countries in exchange for personal enrichment of the President. They literally wrote a clause into the Constitution which, clear as day, says that a President of the United States cannot accept gifts from a foreign Prince, King, or nation. That is exactly what the President is doing. This plane is a gift. He advertises it as a gift--a gift that will be in the American public's hands for a nanosecond before it goes into his private hands.

If we don't take a stand, if we don't act together against this unconstitutional corruption of our foreign policy, I don't know that we can ever get this genie back in the bottle.

I understand that it is difficult for my Republican colleagues to stand up to this President, but we have an independent responsibility, as a coequal branch of government charged with upholding the Constitution, to call out wrong when we see it, to call out illegality when we see it. This is wildly unconstitutional. This is wildly illegal.

So we have a chance today, with these resolutions, in order to make clear that we are not going to accept or make normal this kind of corruption of American foreign policy.

Now, Mr. President, I will finish with this because my colleague from Maryland is going to add some remarks.

I admit that these are imperfect vehicles. It is all part of the same story. Trump would not be moving forward with these arms sales if he wasn't getting what he wanted personally from these two countries. But I also admit that the UAE and, most especially, Qatar have been allies of the United States. We have worked together in our efforts, for instance, to combat terrorism in the region. Qatar specifically has, at times, been a heroic partner of the United States. We would never have been able to rescue thousands of Americans and American allies from Afghanistan without Qatar's help.

Qatar has consistently acted as an interlocutor between warring and conflicting factions in the region. Qatar has taken risks on behalf of the United States. We, of course, have thousands of American troops and soldiers and airmen in Qatar today.

And so what we need to say here is not that we are going to permanently pause our military relationships with these countries, but for the time being, while these two nations are willing to pay the President tribute, we cannot endorse or condone business as usual.

These are important partners of the United States in the region. They will be important partners in the future. But this is an exceptional moment where the corruption and our effort to stop the corruption has to take priority and has to take precedent. And so I am going to vote for both of these resolutions while also still believing that we are going to have a continued, important bilateral relationship with Qatar and with the UAE.

But if we start to endorse and grease the wheels of this kind of corruption, then there will be no end because once it becomes accepted, once it becomes implicitly endorsed by the U.S. Senate that foreign governments can put money into the personal treasury of the President in order to gain favorable treatment from the United States of America, that becomes the way our foreign policy works.

So I appreciate my colleagues' time and attention to this matter, and I encourage them to support these motions when they come up for a vote later this afternoon.
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