Let’s say the results of an election indicate a change in party domination in the House and Senate which will take place Jan 3. The Vice President has just been elected President and will take office Jan. 20. Can the House impeach the Vice President before he assumes office? If the VP was impeached, would the articles of impeachment be null and void after Jan 20? Could the new president be impeached again on Jan 21 for crimes during his vice-presidency?
First, there is impeachment in the House - which is the equivalent of an indictment - and the trial in the Senate, which can result in a conviction, which is the verdict.
If a member of the government is convicted for the crimes for which he or she was impeached, then he or she is gone. Removal from office is the only penalty. (Censure and suchlike is symbolic only.)
There have so few impeachments, and none of a vice president, and none in the circumstances you’re presenting that there is no precedent for a continuation of a trial past an inauguration date and a change in the status of the impeachee.
Although it’s unimaginable that your scenario could play out in real life, it’s clear that the House could impeach a sitting Vice President at any time. If you’re suggesting that they are doing so for political reasons just to derail the inauguration, any rational Senate of any political makeup would just immediately vote not guilty and be done with it. If there were real “high crimes and misdemeanors” involved then there would be a political circus like nothing we’ve ever seen. Almost anything could happen, and it’s all speculation from here on.
Obviously the situation has never come up before, but my feeling is that should the VP be convicted between 1/3 and 1/20, s/he would be removed as VP. S/he would then be sworn in as President 1/20. Impeachment doesn’t disqualify the impeached from holding another federal office.
Yes it does.
Article I, Section 3
You should tell that to Alcee Hastings. He was a federal judge, impeached and convicted, removed from office, and he now sits as US Representative for the 23rd District of Florida.
Weirdly, that very issue is addressed on the website of the House of Representatives, which says that the Senate didn’t vote to bar him from future office. The biography on the congressman’s website is amusing in that it mentions the ten years he served as a judge, with no mention of how he lost that position. I’ll have to remember that approach when writing my resume.
So they interpreted the comma between the clauses as saying that removal and disqualification as two separate things rather than just two parts of one thing.
Given the way they used commas in the 18th century, my reading has always been the latter.
Too bad nobody protested. I would love, love, love to see the Supreme Court tackle that comma. 
Wouldn’t you have to interpret that as a delimiter on possible punishments? That statement doesn’t define punishment for impeachment. It says that judgement “shall not extend further than,” but where does it say “judgement shall extend at least as far as”? Right here:
Evidently removal from office is a minimum mandatory punishment; forfeiture of future offices, like whipped cream, is extra.
“Comma, comma, comma, comma, chameleon.” --dreadfully misquoted by Nott