At about 7:30 a.m. Friday morning, I arrived at Liveshots DC, a small television studio on Capitol Hill used by a number of different news programs. I had come to record an appearance on “Democracy Now!” with Amy Goodman to talk about the Trump-Ukraine scandal.

After sitting down in one of two small adjoining rooms that served as the “green room” for guests, I looked up and noticed that there was one person waiting to appear on television in the next room. It was Jay Sekulow, who served as one of Donald Trump’s lawyers during the Trump-Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, and continues to serve as one of Trump’s personal lawyers. I also noticed that there were two men standing just outside the green room, who appeared to be security guards there to protect Sekulow. (They were wearing lapel pins and dressed in dark suits, but I don’t know whether they were private security or government employees.)

Sekulow was standing on the other side of the open door connecting his room to mine. Not long after I noticed him, he got on his cellphone. I don’t know who he was talking to, but he got right to the point in his phone conversation.

“I’m going on CBS at 8,” he said. “I’m going to see the president at 10. We’ve got to get on top of this thing. I think we can, but we have got to get on top of this.”

A moment or two later, Sekulow added: “He’s going all around town, stirring things up. It’s not helpful.”

Sekulow then moved out of the green room, perhaps because he noticed that he was not alone. It’s also possible that he finally recognized me, because I interviewed him years ago for my first book, “Wrath of Angels,” about the history of the anti-abortion movement. Sekulow was a lawyer for Operation Rescue, the militant anti-abortion protest group.

It’s not hard to figure out what Sekulow was talking about on the phone Friday morning.

Trump and his advisers have lost control of the scandal stemming from his efforts to get a foreign government to help him destroy his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. Disclosures about how Trump withheld aid to Ukraine while he pressured the president of Ukraine to pursue a phony investigation of Biden have prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to announce that the House will begin an impeachment inquiry. Just after he had escaped special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference in 2016, Trump is now facing a new investigation into his efforts to seek foreign help to win the 2020 election.

The Ukraine story has moved fast, and that seemed to be what Sekulow was talking about when he said that “we’ve got to get on top of this thing.”

Sekulow’s comments also show that he is trying to get up to speed on the Ukraine scandal so he can help bail out Trump once again, after representing him during the Mueller investigation. Trump may have asked Sekulow to get involved because Rudy Giuliani, another Trump lawyer, is himself caught up in the middle of the Ukraine scandal, and may not be in a good position to serve as Trump’s lawyer in the upcoming congressional inquiry.