And whereas the conservative argument against a post-Jan. 20 impeachment presupposes that the matter will inevitably end up in the courts (which may be sympathetic to Mr. Trump), that claim, too, is erroneous.
In 1993, the Supreme Court held that it’s not for the courts to review the propriety of impeachments. As Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote, neither any extrinsic evidence from the Constitutional Convention nor contemporaneous commentary suggested that the founders even contemplated “the possibility of judicial review in the context of the impeachment powers.”
It’s ultimately Congress’s call — for former officers as much as current ones.