Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized House Democrats for “handing out souvenirs” after signing an impeachment resolution and sending the articles to the Senate.
“Democrats said over and over that they recognized the gravity and the seriousness of this action and that they had only come to it reluctantly,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Thursday on the Senate floor. “Well, nothing says seriousness and sobriety like handing out souvenirs, as though this were a happy bill signing instead of the gravest process in our constitution.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, held a ceremony in the ornate Rayburn Room of the House chamber to sign a resolution appointing seven impeachment managers to prosecute the case in the Senate.
She signed the resolution with 24 pens, emblazoned with her signature. The pens were arranged on silver platters the media photographed and distributed widely on social media.
Pelosi handed the pens to a group of key House lawmakers after she signed the resolution. The recipients were chairs of the House Committees that investigated President Trump for the past three years and they are among his staunchest foes.
Pelosi has long insisted the impeachment process in the House was not based on politics and was a grave matter undertaken to protect the constitution. Democrats accuse Trump of undermining both national security and the nation’s elections by trying to force Ukraine to publicly pledge to investigate Trump’s top political foe, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Republicans said the ceremony on Wednesday is more evidence that Democrats simply want to oust Trump for political reasons. Some of the pen recipients, including House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters of California, have wanted to impeach him since he took office.
“This final display neatly distilled the House’s entire process into one perfect visual,” McConnell said. “It was transparently a partisan performance from beginning to end.”
The Senate trial weighing two House impeachment articles will begin Jan. 21.
