No. The House is the sole authority on impeachment. The Senate is the sole authority on conducting impeachment trials. Once the House passes an impeachment resolution and it is forwarded to the Senate, the Senate gets to dispose of it how they will. In theory, the Republicans could have voted to throw out the charges for the first impeachment as bogus and not even hold a trial. In any case, if the Senate declines to convict President Trump, the onus would be on the House to impeach President Trump again on new and improved charges.So...Nancy could hold the Articles of Impeachment until 2023 and then refuse to allow any legislation to be voted on until the Senate convicts Trump.
And I'll throw in my two cents. Impeaching and convicting a former federal official is an unsettled question. Some legal questions you don't really know the answer to until you cross that bridge. Maybe the Constitution grants the vice president, in his presiding authority over a joint session of Congress, the power to unilaterally dispose of disputable votes. But clearly Vice President Pence isn't the kind of man to push boundaries like that.
For what it's worth, the Constitution does provide for barring a convicted official from holding federal office. I find it difficult to believe that our Founding Fathers would have overlooked the possibility that someone might resign in order to escape that particular penalty. In fact, several state constitutions at our founding provided explicitly for the possibility of impeaching a former official for that official's public conduct even after his or her service ended.
Last edited: