Nancy Pelosi hands out impeachment pens after signing articles
Donald Trump is the third president in US history to be impeached.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has used multiple pens to sign her name on the impeachment articles against President Donald Trump.
Then she handed each signing pen to the assembled chairmen and House managers who will prosecute the case in the Senate.
Signing pens are held in high value in Washington, often handed out on more celebratory occasions. They can be seen framed and hung in lobbies across the city as trophies of proximity to power.
Mr Trump has engaged in the tradition himself.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham on Wednesday criticised Mrs Pelosi both for the pens and the speaker’s demeanour, which got some criticism on social media for being too cheery for such a grave development.
“Nancy Pelosi’s souvenir pens served up on silver platters to sign the sham articles of impeachment,” Mrs Grisham tweeted, reposting a photo.
Mrs Pelosi, she wrote, “was so sombre as she gave them away to people like prizes”.
Mrs Pelosi’s signature sent the articles against Mr Trump to the Senate for a trial which is expected to open on Thursday.
The House-passed documents charge the president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for pressuring Ukraine to help him politically.
Mr Trump said the whole thing is a “hoax” and claims he is a victim of a political “witch hunt” led by Mrs Pelosi.
He is the third president in US history to be impeached.
Before the signing, aides set out two small trays containing more than two dozen black pens emblazoned with Mrs Pelosi’s signature.
She entered the room and sat at a table, the documents and pens before her.
Mrs Pelosi picked up each pen, signed a bit, and handed each one to a politician.
Mr Trump is familiar with this tradition. In a much-photographed ceremony in June 2018, he signed an executive order halting family separations at the US border. He then handed the pen to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
On December 22, 2017, in the Oval Office, Mr Trump signed the Republican tax bill into law while Congress was in recess.
But Mr Trump’s aides brought some pens, anyway – so he tried to give them out to reporters, but journalists can not take gifts from the people they cover.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson gave away framed sets of the pens he used to sign his “great society” legislation to fight poverty and racial injustice.
A complete set still resides in the press work space behind the White House briefing room.
