i suppose we have to allow that the supreme court has never ruled on such a matter, so we don't have definitive case history on this question.
however, the plain reading is that this was meant to prevent a president from blocking or nullifying congress's power to impeach by pardoning other senior officers (or conceivably, himself). it does not reasonably imply, imho, that an impeached person can't later be pardoned to remove criminal liability.
it's especially difficult to correlate the two because grounds for impeachment may or may not line up exactly with federal criminal code.
so someone might be impeached for some general "abuse of office" and later be tried under a very specific section of the criminal code relating to a similar incident, but would "except in cases of impeachment" apply if the charge is technically different?
moreover, just because congress decided to impeach someone, it's not at all clear to me that the founders would have intended that to nullify the presidential pardon power. especially if the senate failed to convict.
more directly, a "criminal case" is different from a "case of impeachment".
so donnie couldn't prevent congress from impeaching barr if congress decided to pursue that, but he could keep barr out of prison by pardoning him.
more important, pence could certainly pardon donnie even if he were to be impeached and possibly removed. it wouldn't save his job, but it would keep him out of federal prison.
state prison is another matter....
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