Asylum seekers who have finished their court cases are being sent back to Mexico with documents that contain fraudulent future court dates, keeping some migrants south of the border indefinitely, records show.

Under the Migrant Protection Protocols policy, asylum seekers with cases in the United States have to wait in Mexico until those cases are resolved. The Mexican government agreed to only accept migrants with future court dates scheduled.

Normally, when migrants conclude their immigration court cases, they are either paroled into the United States or kept in federal custody depending on the outcome of the case.

However, records obtained by the San Diego Union-Tribune show that on at least 14 occasions, Customs and Border Protection agents in California and Texas gave migrants who had already concluded their court cases documents with fraudulent future court dates written on them and sent the migrants back to Mexico anyway.

Those documents, unofficially known as tear sheets, are given to every migrant in the Migrant Protection Protocols program who is sent back to Mexico. The document tells the migrants where and when to appear at the border so that they can be transported to immigration court. What is different about the tear sheets that migrants with closed cases receive is that the future court date is not legitimate, according to multiple immigration lawyers whose clients have received these documents.

This has happened both to migrants who have been granted asylum and those who had their cases terminated — meaning a judge closed the case without making a formal decision, usually on procedural grounds. Additionally, at least one migrant was physically assaulted after being sent back to Mexico this way, according to her lawyer.

Bashir Ghazialam, a San Diego immigration lawyer who represents six people who received these fake future court dates, said he was shocked by the developments.

“This is fraud,” he said. “I don’t call everything fraud. This is the first time I’ve used the words, ‘U.S. government’ and ‘fraud’ in the same sentence. No one should be OK with this.”

The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection did not respond to multiple requests to comment about why they had engaged in the practice.

Ghazialam first noticed this in September, when three of his clients were sent back to Mexico after their cases were terminated on Sept. 17. After the judge made his decision, the family spent 10 days in Customs and Border Protection custody.

On Sept. 27, the family was given a document that read, in part, “At your last court appearance, an immigration judge ordered you to return to court for another hearing.” That piece of paper told them to return to court on Nov. 28.

However, the immigration judge ordered no further hearing. Ghazialam’s clients do not have a hearing scheduled on that or any other day.

To confirm Ghazialam’s claims, a reporter called a Department of Justice hotline that people with immigration court cases use to check their status and dates of future hearings. That hotline confirmed that the family’s case had been terminated on Sept. 17 and that “the system does not contain any information regarding a future hearing date on your case.”

“That date is completely made up and the Mexican authorities are not trained enough to know this is a fake court date,” Ghazialam said.

After being returned to Mexico, the mother was stabbed in the forearm while protecting her children from an attempted kidnapping. She still has stitches from the knife wound, Ghazialam said.

The mother presented herself at the border shortly after the stabbing. She told Customs and Border Protection agents that she was afraid to stay in Mexico. The agents gave her a fear of return interview and tried to send her back to Mexico.

But this time, Mexican immigration officials refused to let her and her children back into Mexico because they did not have a court date, Ghazialam said. She is currently with relatives in New York, waiting to figure out the future of her legal status in the United States while wearing an ankle monitor.

In most of these cases, immigration attorneys aren’t aware that their clients were sent back to Mexico until it’s too late.

In one case, a Cuban asylum seeker was returned to Mexico after an immigration judge in Brownsville, Texas, granted her asylum.

The woman’s lawyer, Jodi Goodwin, remembers hugging her client after the decision and arranging a place to meet after authorities released her later that day following processing.

Goodwin expected the process to take 45 minutes, so she went to a nearby Whataburger and ordered a chocolate milkshake. About 40 minutes later, she got a phone call from her client.

“She was hysterical and crying,” Goodwin said. “I’m like, ‘What happened?’ and she says, ‘I’m in Mexico.’”

Goodwin called U.S. and Mexican immigration authorities to try to find out what happened. She spent five hours at the border until 9 p.m. and then went back home to draft a lawsuit. It wasn’t until she threatened to sue CBP that her client was paroled into the United States.

“It was total chaos for 24 hours to try to figure it out,” Goodwin said. “It shouldn’t be like that, especially when CBP is blatantly lying. They are creating documents that have false information.”

The American Immigration Lawyers Assn. said the practice worried them.

“The idea that even though these vulnerable individuals are able to obtain an asylum grant from an immigration judge and CBP is sending them back to harm’s way in Mexico is really disturbing, especially under the guise that there’s a future hearing date,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel for the organization.

Mexico’s Institute for National Migration did not immediately respond to questions about this practice.

Although Ghazialam and Goodwin were able to eventually get their clients back in the United States, some people are still in Mexico.

That’s what happened to a Guatemalan woman and her two children after a judge terminated their case on Oct. 18. The same day the judge closed their case, a U.S. immigration official gave her a piece of paper with the false hearing date of Jan. 16.

“But this appointment does not exist,” said the woman’s New York City attorney, Rebecca Press. “If you check with the immigration court system there is no January hearing date and the case has already been terminated.”

It’s unclear how widespread this practice is. Lawyers in San Diego; Laredo, Texas; and Brownsville confirmed they have seen it firsthand.

However, only about 1% of asylum seekers in the Migrant Protection Protocols program have lawyers. Therefore it’s difficult to track what happens to the overwhelming majority of the people in the program.

Lawyers said asylum seekers without legal representation who have been sent back in this manner likely have no way of advocating for themselves. It took Goodwin hours of calls to high-level officials in both U.S. and Mexican immigration agencies plus the threat of a lawsuit to get her client back in the United States.

“If you don’t have someone who’s willing to sit around and spend five hours on the phone and stay up all night drafting litigation to force their hand, you’re going to be stuck,” she said.

As news of these false hearing dates spread among the immigration attorney community, some lawyers are taking proactive steps to protect their clients from being returned to Mexico after their court cases are closed.

Siobhan Waldron, a Los Angeles lawyer, wrote a letter to Mexican immigration officials explaining that her client had no future hearing date and outlined a step-by-step process Mexican officials could take to verify that her client’s case had been closed by using the Department of Justice hotline.

The letter worked at first.

When CBP officers tried to return Waldron’s client to Mexico on Nov. 1 with a false January hearing date, her client showed the note to Mexican officials, who refused to take her in. However, the next day, CBP officers sent Waldron’s client back to Mexico with another false court date and this time did not allow her to show Mexican officials her lawyer’s letter that she kept in a special folder, Waldron said.

“They didn’t let her take it out,” Waldron said. “They said, ‘You can’t present anything from that folder.’”

The lawyer plans to file “any complaint you can imagine” to CBP, the Department of Homeland Security and other regulatory agencies because “these agents need to be held accountable.”

Her client is still in Mexico, too afraid to walk outside because she has already been kidnapped and assaulted, Waldron added.

Solis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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BRUSSELS — 

French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that a lack of U.S. leadership is causing the “brain death” of the NATO military alliance, insisting in an interview published Thursday that the European Union must step up and start acting as a strategic world power.

Macron’s public criticism of the state of the world’s biggest military alliance was rejected by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, setting the scene for a possible showdown in London next month when President Trump joins his counterparts.

“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” Macron told the Economist magazine. He said the United States under Trump appears to be “turning its back on us,” notably by pulling troops out of northeast Syria without notice.

Trump surprised his NATO partners with last month’s troop withdrawal. NATO plays no role in Syria, apart from helping the coalition fighting Islamic State. But the move was seen by Turkey, another NATO ally, as a green light to invade the region.

“So as soon as you have a member who feels they have a right to head off on their own, granted by the United States of America, they do it. And that’s what happened,” Macron said.

Trump also wrong-footed the allies by announcing a troop drawdown in Afghanistan and then declaring that peace talks with the Taliban were canceled after a bomb attack killed a U.S. soldier. NATO has played a major security role in the country since 2003, but its future there is now unclear.

Beyond that, the U.S. leader publicly berated other leaders at a May 2017 summit for failing to boost their military budgets. Trump’s preoccupation with defense spending has been a constant theme since he came to office in 2016 and is expected to feature at the Dec. 3-4 summit in London.

The United States is the biggest and most influential member of NATO. It spends more on its defense budget than all the other members combined.

Macron said the European members of the 29-nation alliance “should reassess the reality of what NATO is in the light of the commitment of the United States.”

But after talks with Stoltenberg in Berlin, Merkel said: “The French president chose drastic words. That is not my view of cooperation in NATO and I think that such a sweeping blow is not necessary, even if we do have problems, even if we must pull together.”

More broadly, Trump’s trade tariffs against the EU have also rankled European members of NATO and have appeared to target Germany. His decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement particularly annoyed Macron.

In the interview, Macron said that Trump “doesn’t share our idea of the European project.” He added that Europe stands on “the edge of a precipice” and must start thinking like a geopolitical power, otherwise it will “no longer be in control of our destiny.”

Merkel, however, said that “we in Europe certainly must take our fate in our hands a bit more, but the trans-Atlantic alliance is indispensable for us and I think there are many areas in which NATO works well.”

Agreeing with Merkel, Stoltenberg said, “We have to remember that any attempt to distance Europe from North America risks not only [weakening] the alliance, the trans-Atlantic bond, but also [dividing] Europe, so therefore we have to stand together.”

“I welcome European unity, I welcome efforts to strengthen European defense, but European unity cannot replace trans-Atlantic unity,” he added.

Here’s a pretty cool byproduct of the recent decision to allow Olympic figure skaters to perform to music with lyrics—now you can see them skate to some of the biggest hit pop songs. 

Skaters competing in the ice dancing short program on Saturday night were required to feature a “Latin rhythm” in their routines, and two pairs picked the Luis Fonsi mega hit “Despacito.”

First up was the South Korean pair of Yura Min and Alexander Gamelin. 

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The very next duo, Chinese skaters Shiyue Wang and Xinyu Liu, also incorporated “Despacito” into their dance. Not the most original choice, but can you blame them for picking such a banger?

If there’s one thing that #MeToo movement has brought to light is that sexual harassment happens across all workplaces. Late last year, the Harvey Weinsten scandal rocked Hollywood with actresses speaking out not only against the movie producer but many other men including Kevin Spacey, Jeffrey Tambor, and Ed Westwick. 

Now, emboldened by the movement set off in 2017 models are adding their voices to the #MeToo movement. Over 50 models spoke to the Boston Globe‘s investigative team, Spotlight, about the sexual assault and abuse they experienced at the hands of famous photographers, agents, stylists, and casting directors. The goal is to expose serial predators, as well to demand protections—like the most recent rule during New York Fashion Week to provide private places to change—in an industry that often exploits young models. 

The models—both women and men—who spoke to the Globe made credible allegations against 25 high-powered fashion industry professionals. The accused include some of the most well-known names in the fashion industry, including Patrick Demarchelier, who was Princess Diana’s personal photographer. 

RELATED: Coco Rocha Was Told to Stay Silent About Harassment in the Modeling Industry

In the wake of the Weinstein accusations, one of Demarchelier’s former photo assistants wrote to Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour last October about her experiences with the photographer and pleaded with her to end the magazine’s relationship with him. She wrote telling Wintour that he preyed on her when she was a 19-year-old intern. Eventually, fearing for her job and career advancement, she gave into his advances, but whenever he refused Demarchelier would later berate her on set. 

“It hurts my heart so much to think of how many girls, many my own daughter’s age who have had to fend off or give in to his advances because I didn’t speak up at the time,” the woman, who has asked to remain anonymous, wrote in another e-mail that was circulated to a modeling group. “I remember many test shoots with teenage girls where Patrick’s team of assistants (including me) was dismissed for the day only to find naked photos of the girl in the darkroom the next day.”

Vogue and other Condé Nast publications informed the Globe on Feb. 10 that they’ve suspended their relationship. “We have informed Patrick we will not be working with him for the foreseeable future.”

RELATED: Kate Upton Details Alleged Sexual Harassment by Paul Marciano

The Globe interviewed six other women about their experiences with Demarchelier, who accused him of unwanted advances, including thrusting a model’s hands onto her genitals and grabbing another model’s breasts.  

Four years ago, another young model encountered Demarchelier on a shoot, allegedly asking a teenage model, “Can I lick your pussy?” indicating that if she said yes he would make her famous. She rejected his advances and immediately left the shoot in Paris. Two years later, despite her protests, her agents booked her for another shoot with him, where he asked her the same question. 

Demarchelier denies the allegations, telling the Globe that it’s “impossible” that the accusations against him are true. “People lie and they tell stories,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.” Demarchelier said he has “never, never, never” touched a model inappropriately. He made a point to tell the newspaper that he’s married, calling the accusations “pure lying” by models who “get frustrated if they don’t work.”

He’s hardly the only fashion industry heavyweight named. Others include David Bellemere, whose photos have appeared on the covers of Elle and Marie Claire Italy; and Greg Kadel, who has shot for mega brands like Victoria’s Secret and Vogue. 

Models like Coco Rocha and Kate Upton also told the Globe about their experiences. Rocha has been vocal about her an instance with Terry Richardson, who pretended to have an orgasm while shooting her nearly a decade ago. “It’s interesting and frustrating that now people want to finally pay attention,” she told the Globe. There are “people at the top who no doubt have heard these stories for the last 20 years,” she added, “and haven’t done anything.” In recent weeks Upton has accused Guess co-founder Paul Marciano of assault allegations, which he denies. 

Read the full report at bostonglobe.com.

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Jamie Dornan shows a lot of skin in the Fifty Shades franchise, including the upcoming final film Fifty Shades Freed, but he doesn’t bare all during those steamy sex scenes. In fact, he’s wearing exactly one article of clothing when they get hot and heavy.

“I wear like a wee-bag. Well, that’s an expression I say from where I’m from, a wee-bag. But it doesn’t mean it’s actually wee in size. I wear like quite a big bag!” he joked on Wednesday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock

Unfortunately, though, he doesn’t have his own that he can use. “I mean I’d love to get to the stage where you have your own one that you carry around,” he said.

Instead, the studio provides one for him, but it’s not brand new. “There was a selection of them for me and I picked one,” he explained. “I sort of picked one that I liked the look of and the shape of and then I picked it up and in the seam it said, ‘Inmate No. 3.’ It was like sewed into it. I was like, ‘S—, this has been used before?’”

Despite being grossed out, Dornan dutifully put it on for his many sex scenes with Dakota Johnson. But despite their steamy on-screen relationship, they have a very different vibe in real life.

RELATED: Jamie Dornan Shows Off a New Talent in the Next Fifty Shades Movie

“This is going to sound bad, but it’s almost like brother-sister. Because I am married and [Dakota’s] had quite a lot of relationships in the time that we’ve known each other, so that’s happening in our own lives. You just have this sort of mutual love and respect for each other. I feel we know each other so well—intimately,” Dornan explained.

Watch the hilarious video at top for his uncomfortable story about watching Fifty Shades Freed for the first time with a security guard. You’re in for a treat.

Alexa Ray Joel has zero tolerance for haters. The daughter of singer Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley recently took aim at a troll who compared her looks to those of her younger sister, Sailor Brinkley Cook, 19.

The drama unfolded in the comments section of a recent Instagram post by Brinkley, celebrating Sailor’s appearance in the 2018 Sports Illustrated Rookie of the Year competition. In a now-deleted comment, user @sams7007 decided it was an appropriate forum to criticize Alexa’s appearance.

And, Alexa, 32, was having none of it. “@sams7007 Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Mr. Big Shot,” the brunette beauty clapped back. “You may think I’m hideous, but I like the way I look. And that’s really all the matters. (Besides, there’s a lot more to people than just what they look like.)”

“But hey, continue being a shallow, hateful troll in life and see where it gets you!” she continued.

Alexa appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated alongside her mom and Sailor in 2017. Afterwards, both sisters took to their Instagram accounts with body positive essays.

“Let’s STOP degrading and START celebrating ourselves and others, from both the inside AND out. There’s far too much degradation, competition, insecurity, and unhealthy standards associated with women and their bodies- particularly on social-media,” Alexa wrote. “I don’t have a completely flat tummy, or cellulite-free thighs… nor am I a model’s height or shape. Neither are hundreds of millions of other beautiful women out there. SO WHAT? Does it really matter, in the end? All that matters is how YOU feel about yourself.”

You tell ’em, Alexa!

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I was 23 when I pulled the trigger of a gun for the first time at the NRA range in Fairfax, Va. It was 2011, and I had no idea where San Bernardino was or just how close Sandy Hook Elementary was to my grandpa’s house. Feeling the handgrip of the Glock 19 in my slightly sweaty palms, my boyfriend holding me steady, I took a deep breath and squeezed. Bang! I shot the ceiling. Bang! The corner of the paper target. It was exhilarating.

I grew up in a very liberal household in Connecticut. My mother didn’t like the idea of water guns. Going to a shooting range, encouraged by my gun-owning boyfriend, felt like rebellion. But it was more than that—while my feet were rooted in Virginia, emotionally I was back in my college town in Maryland, protecting myself from every creep who followed me across campus at night or grabbed me in a bar against my will. I breathed in the metallic smell of the range and thought about the possibility of never being vulnerable again. Police officers shoot Glock 19s, and now, so did I. I was no longer that defenseless, five-foot-tall girl. I was a strong, confident woman with a gun.

From that moment, I was hooked on the Second Amendment. How dare someone try to take away my right to self-protection. My boyfriend gave me an NRA bumper sticker and I put it on my car, right next to my half marathon 13.1 sticker, celebrating the other most empowering force in my life.

RELATED: What It’s Like to Lose a Child in a Mass School Shooting

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I wasn’t reckless, nor was my boyfriend or the other gun enthusiasts I met. They understood that weapons are not toys. I took the range’s required safety course, consisting of showing my driver’s license, my boyfriend’s permit, and a surprisingly simplistic multiple-choice quiz. (Where do you point the gun? Answer: Always down the range, never at your face.)

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Soon, I graduated to the revolver and then the assault rifle: the AR-15. The rapid fire and seemingly endless magazine made me feel like a hero. My boyfriend had customized his rifle with a better handgrip and scope. These pieces cost hundreds of dollars.

I asked him why he owned this gun if all we were doing was shooting at paper. “Simple,” he responded. “I need it for protection.” Surely a handgun was enough to feel safe, though, right? He looked confused, almost angry. “I want to be prepared.” Should I have been more afraid about the dangerous world I lived in? I considered buying my own gun.

In the years that followed, I heard about dozens of shootings: School shootings, workplace shootings, concert shootings, army base shootings. They were always crushing, but none of them necessarily abated my gun lust. I was no longer with that boyfriend, but I’d dated other men and had a roommate who owned guns legally and safely. They followed protocol, using special gun safes both at home and while carrying, and they respected the huge responsibility they had took on when holding a weapon. It was their identity. I was disturbed by the tragedies and horrified for their victims, but the way I used guns had nothing to do with that.

RELATED: I’m Old Enough to Buy a Gun but Not to Be Taken Seriously?

Still, I felt an inner conflict every time I read those headlines. The same year I started shooting, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 18 other people were shot in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson, Ariz. I felt queasy realizing that I had shot the same handgun that Jared Lee Loughner had used. I remember his maniacal face in papers, and while I knew that I would never use a gun the same way he did, was our excitement about the power of wrapping our hands around a handgrip all that different? We had a spooky connection.

I moved to Connecticut in 2015 and took my pistol permit class, which pending a background check and fingerprints, would enable me to own a handgun legally. Connecticut has notoriously strict gun laws, so I thought it would be an onerous process. But I took a four-hour NRA safety course (about 10 minutes of which were in a range), and then I was allowed to shoot. Internally, I questioned how safe this was—after all, driver’s ed requires hours behind the wheel before you can get a driver’s license. This experience plus a background check would get me a gun in a few months.

But eventually, I decided not to. Would I truly be safer? People say that an emotional response to a tragedy is not good reason to change your stance on guns laws. But what really changed my mind was the number of times I had to have that emotional response. Two weeks before Parkland, a friend of mine lost his teenage son to a tragic gun accident in his home. AR-15s (a gun I’d also shot) were by that point regularly mentioned in the news. Aurora. Sandy Hook. San Bernardino. Orlando. Las Vegas. Sutherland Springs. And most recently Parkland. I had convinced myself that these individual cases were flukes, that bad people will always abuse their power, but you can’t ignore such an obvious pattern; it’s data.

VIDEO: The School Walkout in Parkland, Florida

The NRA’s response to these tragedies, to Parkland in particular, was the final straw for me. Their idea? Combat bad guys with guns with more good guys with guns. Fear tactics. People often sarcastically equate gun control laws with a ban on cars. After all, cars kill more people. But cars are controlled. You can support the Second Amendment, even be a gun enthusiast, while also advocating for common sense laws like background checks, bump stock bans, and waiting periods. In fact, 97 percent of gun owners support background checks. The NRA chooses to use fear tactics instead. The organization doesn’t support the intent of the Second Amendment, which is why it lost my and many other people’s confidence after Parkland.

America has a mental healthcare problem. There are not enough avenues through which to get help and there’s a stigma around treatment. It’s a problem we need to fix and one that would surely decrease some people’s predisposition to violence. But other countries have mental healthcare deficits too and a fraction of the mass shootings. The difference? The U.S. has more guns per capita than any other country worldwide. In some states, guns have shorter waiting periods than reputable therapists.

RELATED: Why I’m Walking Out of School for Gun Safety

So yes, a person hellbent on harming others will do so no matter what, but making it easy for that person to get their hands on an assault weapon turns violence into mass violence. That’s why I’ve thrown away my gun license, torn off the NRA bumper sticker, and now fully support an assault rifle ban.

I don’t think gun owners are bad or oblivious. I respect their right to be able to protect themselves. But teenagers also have the right to attend school without being shot dead. I get scared walking to my car at night, too. I want to be that badass woman who can protect myself from anyone and anything. But despite the NRA’s effort to make me think otherwise, I also know that I don’t need an AR-15 or a preconfigured magazine to do that.

Is Justin Timberlake planning to have more children with Jessica Biel? He’s hinted at wanting to give almost-3-year-old son Silas a sibling before, but the latest pregnancy news surrounding Timberlake has nothing to do with his own family.

At his latest Man of the Woods Tour show in Detroit on Monday, the pop star made one woman’s ultimate fantasy come true. Basically, JT fan Darcell Baxtresser headed to his show with a sign that read, “Will you help me announce my pregnancy?” While he was performing, Timberlake spotted the sign and brought his own show to a halt to make her wish come true.

He carried the sign she brought with her on stage and then said, “Baby Baxtresser arriving November 1, 2018.” Timberlake also joked and asked if he could nickname her child “baby Bax.” Watch it all go down here:

In an interview with E! News, Baxtresser explained that she didn’t plan to share the news of her pregnancy with her family for several more weeks, but thought doing it through Timberlake would be incredible.

RELATED: What Will Khloé Kardashian Name Her Baby Girl? Here Are Our Predictions

“I’ve loved him since I was 6 years old so if I wanted anyone in the world to announce it, it was him,” she said. “As soon as it happened, cousins and friends who were at the show were blowing up my phone, so I figured I had to tell my family right away. I group texted my siblings and parents the video and they were all going nuts. I sent it to my husband and he was just like ‘Oh wow!!'”

Will baby Bax be named after Justin? She has different plans for that, though she did say Timberlake is invited to be the Godfather. A memorable pregnancy announcement indeed.

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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s floral arrangements at their upcoming wedding will be full of locally-sourced flowers and plants!

The royal couple have chosen floral designer Philippa Craddock to create and design the church flowers for their May 19 nuptials, according to Kensington Palace.

Craddock—whose client list includes Kensington Palace and fashion houses Alexander McQueen and Christian Dior—will be in charge of creating the displays at St. George’s Chapel, where the actual ceremony will be held, and at St. George’s Hall at Windsor Castle, where the Queen will host a luncheon for the newly married couple.

Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images

The floral designer, who specializes in utilizing seasonal flowers in her work, will be creating the floral displays mostly using foliage from the gardens and parklands of The Crown Estate and Windsor Great Park, according to the palace.

And when possible, Craddock will also be using flowers and plants that are in season and blooming naturally in May, which will include branches of beech, birch, and hornbeam, as well as white garden roses, peonies, and foxgloves.

While the exact designs have yet to be revealed, according to the press release the arrangements will reflect the natural landscapes from which the flowers, plants and branches were taken from

“I am excited and honored to have been chosen by Prince Harry and Ms. Meghan Markle to create and design their wedding flowers,” Craddock said in a press release.

RELATED: Why Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Royal Wedding Could Cost $45 Million

“Working with them has been an absolute pleasure. The process has been highly collaborative, free-flowing, creative and fun. The final designs will represent them as a couple, which I always aim to achieve in my work, with local sourcing, seasonality and sustainability being at the forefront,” she added.

Additionally, according to the press release, the floral designs will include a very sustainable inclusion from the Royal Parks— pollinator-friendly plants, which provide a wonderful habitat for bees.

After the pair tie the knot, Harry and Meghan have arranged for the arrangements to be distributes to various charitable organizations.

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WASHINGTON — 

William B. Taylor Jr., the top U.S. official in Ukraine and a key witness in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, told House investigators about a “nightmare” foreign policy gambit in pursuit of political dirt against Joe Biden that he believed was likely to embolden Russia and how he threatened to resign over it.

House Democrats on Wednesday released a transcript of a closed-door deposition by Taylor, the first witness to provide evidence of a quid pro quo in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. In his testimony, he recounted for lawmakers last month how Trump empowered his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to open up an unofficial diplomatic channel with Ukraine.

Taylor described how Trump prevented the release of military aid to Ukraine as he used that back channel to prod the country’s leaders to publicly announce an investigation of Biden, the former vice president and potential 2020 rival to Trump.

Taylor testified that he learned in September from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, that the aid and a White House visit sought by Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, were both “dependent” on a public statement about an investigation. He worried that demand could embarrass Ukraine and further embolden Russia, he testified.

“The Russians want to know how much support the Ukrainians are going to get in general, but also what kind of support from the Americans,” Taylor told lawmakers. “So the Russians are loving, would love, the humiliation of Zelensky at the hand of the Americans, and would give the Russians a freer hand, and I would quit.”

Explaining to lawmakers his conversation with Sondland, Taylor said he worried about Ukraine making such a statement to satisfy Trump even without a guarantee that the president would eventually release the aid, which is important to the country’s ability to defend itself against incursions by Russia-backed separatists.

The nightmare, Taylor explained, was that Zelensky would mention Burisma, the natural gas company where Biden’s son Hunter served for five years on the board, “get himself in big trouble in [the U.S.] and probably in his country as well, and the security assistance would not be released.”

Democrats in the room for Taylor’s deposition Oct. 22 said it was remarkably “thorough.” The 324-page transcript reveals the detail with which he described key events.

Not surprising, given how central his testimony is to the case, Taylor is scheduled to be the first witness to testify in a public setting Nov. 13 as the impeachment inquiry emerges from behind closed doors after six weeks of witness interviews.

Taylor’s account has now been corroborated by other officials. Sondland amended his testimony this week after claiming that depositions given by other witnesses, especially Taylor, had “refreshed” his memory about telling an aide to Zelensky that the security assistance wouldn’t be delivered until a public statement was made about an investigation.

Taylor described himself as being “alarmed” upon hearing Sept. 1 from Tim Morrison, a National Security Council official at the time, that the aid was contingent on such a statement.

He was similarly disturbed by a subsequent phone call that day with Sondland, who “told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election,” he said.

Sondland had “recognized that he had made a mistake” by informing Ukrainian officials that a White House meeting was contingent on a public statement about investigations from Kyiv, even though that was the case, Taylor said.

“Ambassador Sondland said everything was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky in a box by making public statement [sic] about ordering such investigations,” he testified.

Taylor was explicit on two issues that are central to the investigation — that Trump was demanding an investigation that could have an effect on the 2020 campaign and that the Ukrainians wanted no part of it.

“It was becoming clear to the Ukrainians that, in order to get this meeting that they wanted, they would have to commit to pursuing these investigations,” Taylor testified.

He said that Ukraine’s former finance minister, Oleksandr Danylyuk, “understood — and I’m sure that he briefed President Zelensky, I’m sure they had this conversation” that “opening those investigations, in particular on Burisma, would have involved Ukraine in the 2020 election campaign. He did not want to do that.”

Taylor, who came out of retirement in June to serve as U.S. envoy to Ukraine, will be the first of two witnesses to repeat their private testimony in a public setting when the impeachment inquiry enters a new, more television-friendly phase next week.

Taylor and George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of State, are scheduled to testify Nov. 13, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) announced Wednesday.

Former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled from her post by Trump, is scheduled to testify Nov. 15, also in a public hearing.

Yovanovitch’s initial testimony was released this week.

Schiff, whom Republicans have criticized for presiding over what they claim is a partisan impeachment process, told reporters Wednesday that the public hearings will allow Americans to hear the evidence and “to evaluate the witnesses for themselves, to make their own determinations about the credibility of the witnesses, but also to learn firsthand about the facts of the president’s misconduct.”

Despite the mounting evidence of a quid pro quo, Republicans have continued to defend the president’s actions. In recent days, several GOP senators said that such behavior, however problematic, doesn’t rise to the level of a crime or isn’t an impeachable offense.

On Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, offered a new defense, suggesting that the Trump White House was too inept to execute a quid pro quo.

“What I can tell you about the Trump policy toward the Ukraine, it was incoherent, it depends on who you talk to,” Graham told reporters. “They seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo.”

Times staff writer Noah Bierman contributed to this report.

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