You may have heard that Donald Trump is interested in accepting a $400 million gift — an updated version of Air Force One that’s newer, fancier and more to the president’s liking — from the nation of Qatar.

Most legal and ethical experts seem to agree that would be a terrible decision; embarrassing, unethical and and possibly unconstitutional.

Qatar is one of the primary funders of Hamas. The plane would likely have to be literally disassembled to check for spyware. No gifts come without strings or expectations. And if the plane is passed along to Trump’s library foundation, it could violate the constitutional ban on gifts “from any King, Prince or foreign State.”

So how is the Trump administration supposedly justifying all this? Through Attorney General Pam Bondi.

 ABC News reported that Bondi — Florida’s messy former attorney general and former lobbyist for Qatar — conducted some kind of legal and ethical “analysis” to conclude all of this would be OK.

This is where you have to stop and laugh at the idea of Pam Bondi being anyone’s arbiter of ethical behavior.

It’s like asking a skunk whether it’s OK to stink.

Pam Bondi’s flawed ethical compass is one of her defining characteristics. It’s a big part of how she got her current job as United States Attorney General — by refusing to follow the ethical norms of prosecutors when she was Florida’s AG, deciding to take campaign money from Trump while her office was supposedly in the process of investigating him.

See, I may not know much about the history of Kristi Noem, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Trump’s other Cabinet members. But I absolutely know about Bondi’s ethical foibles, because I was one of those who exposed them.

And what you’re seeing now with Qatar is a pattern of behavior — Bondi making legal decisions involving interests that have paid her.

For those who don’t remember, Bondi’s most infamous imbroglio took place back in 2013 when her office had been asked to investigate multiple complaints from Floridians who said they’d been fleeced by a program called “Trump University” that was supposed to make them rich.

Just three days after Bondi’s office said it was “reviewing” the complaints, Bondi cashed a $25,000 check to her campaign account from Trump’s foundation.

If you don’t understand why that’s wildly unethical, you’re not thinking very hard. Imagine that you reported being mugged and then learned that the prosecutor who was supposed to prosecute the crime had cashed a $25,000 check from the alleged mugger. No prosecutor with a lick of principles would do such a thing.

Yet Bondi cashed the check — which was later ruled to have been stroked illegally, since charitable foundations aren’t allowed to donate to political causes — and then decided not to pursue any of the complaints against Trump University.

Meanwhile, the attorney general in New York, who had received similar complaints against Trump U. — but not taken any campaign cash from Trump — pursued the complaints and secured a $25 million settlement for residents in that state.

Now look at the latest news where Bondi, who was paid to work as a foreign lobbyist for the nation of Qatar before joining the Trump administration, is reportedly weighing in on the plane.

If you ask a former lobbyist for Qatar if they think it’s OK to accept a gift from Qatar, what do you think they will say?

Think about your own life. Would you trust advice you got about a company from someone who was paid to lobby for that company?  Would you trust a prosecutor who decided not to prosecute someone who’d just cut them a check? This stuff isn’t complicated.

I’d like to believe that, at the end of the day, the president and people close to him will ultimately conclude that accepting this pricey gift from the Hamas funders in Qatar is a bad idea. Especially as Trump’s private businesses are securing deals to build a luxury resort in the same country. Even some of Trump’s GOP allies in Congress are wincing and voicing objections.

As a general rule, it’s rarely a good idea for politicians to accept free things.

I’ve been writing about this kind of nonsense for decades — whether it was a congressman taking a golfing trip to Scotland arranged by a lobbyist or legislators taking free theme-park passes from tourism interests.

As I wrote before: “People don’t give you free trips to Scotland — or free anything — unless they want something from you.”

That hasn’t changed since I wrote it nearly 20 years ago. Nor has it changed in the nearly 240 years since the Founding Fathers carefully constructed the United States Constitution and included what’s known as the “emoluments clause” that bans officeholders from accepting foreign gifts without congressional approval.

“This rule that presidents cannot take the equivalent of 400 million bucks in cash from a foreign government was so important,” one former chief White House ethics lawyer told The Washington Post, “that it’s the only ethics and conflicts rule that was put directly in the Constitution by the founders and the framers.”

So on one hand you have respected ethical experts and the U.S. Constitution. On the other, you have Bondi — the woman who thought it was OK to cash a campaign check from the man she’d been asked to investigate.

You can decide for yourself who’s the better ethical barometer.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

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