EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt spent $1,560 on a set of customized fountain pens — each of which cost taxpayers $130, according to agency documents.
The order was processed by a shop in Washington called Tiny Jewel Box, which describes itself as the capital’s “premier destination for fine jewelry and watches.”
Documents obtained by the Sierra Club outline the request and feature an exchange between staffers who helped push it through.
“The cost of the Qty. 12 Fountain Pens will be around $1,560.00,” one staffer wrote an email on Aug. 14 to Millan Hupp, Pruitt’s scheduling director.
“All the other items total cost is around $1,670.00 which these items are in process,” they said. “Please advise.”
Hupp responded in an email later that day, according to the documents, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“Yes, please order,” he said. “Thank you.”
The purchase is just the latest in a long line of controversial expenditures reported about Pruitt this year.
The EPA chief has come under fire for using taxpayer money to fund first-class travel, among other things.
His office defended the pen order in a statement Friday to the Washington Post, saying it had been done in the past.
“[The purchases] were made for the purpose of serving as gifts to the Administrator’s foreign counterparts and dignitaries upon his meeting with them,” said EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox. “This adheres to the same protocol of former EPA Administrators and were purchased using funds budgeted for such a purpose.”



