Good Friday morning. I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your political playbook audio briefing

presented by Blue Cross-Bus Shield Association. Pause for a second and consider the week we're about

to have. At some point today, House Democrats will wrap up their impeachment arguments and on Saturday,

President Trump's team will get its chance to begin. Trump's lawyers get three calendar days to use up

their 24 hours, so they'll have to wrap up by Tuesday.

Most people involved with the strategy believe they'll use just part of two days.

That'll set up a witness debate and document debate sometime Monday or Tuesday and potentially a final vote next week. Trump has his own counter programming, which includes a summit with his

close allied Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and potentially his rival, Benny Gansz, to discuss the peace process. This is the same peace process Jared Kushner's been working on for years, the one that President Trump said, if Jared can't do it, it can't be done. On Wednesday, the president will sign the USMCA at the White House. Will he invite House Democrats, who played an integral role in negotiating the deal? If he does, will they go? And if

they go, will he use the occasion to bash them for impeaching him? Back to impeachment, if the Senate

votes for witnesses, then either we see dealmaking with McConnell and Schumer coming to terms on a

package of witnesses or a series of contentious votes on witnesses, which could last a while.

If the Senate votes against witnesses, this could last a while. If the Senate votes against

witnesses, this could all be over by the end of next week, just in time for the Iowa caucuses

in the state of the union during the first week of February. By the way, Alfalfa's Saturday night

and Mitt Romney, a potential vote for witnesses is speaking. A couple important impeachment stories.

John Bresdenham and Burgess Everett write about Lamar Alexander being the key for Donald Trump.

He's a Senate institutionalist and also somebody who is retiring at the end of the term.

Important quote from Burgess and Bres from Chris Murphy, the Democratic Connecticut.

He says he was, quote, much more optimistic last week than I am this week about winning the vote of

on witnesses. CNN's Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb write that the Senate Republicans are using

Trump's executive privilege threat as a rallying cry against subpoenas, very important as the

witness debate gets closer. Here's it on tap for the president's Friday. The president will leave

...