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Monday, March 18, 2024

Is Voting Still Worth It? Just Ask Ms. Gadson-Birch.

Is Voting Still Worth It? Just Ask Ms. Gadson-Birch.

A portrait of Beverly Gadson-Birch outside her home in Charleston, S.C.
Gavin McIntyre for The New York Times

By Mara Gay

“Ms. Gay is a member of the editorial board. She reported from Charleston, S.C., for this essay.

Beverly Gadson-Birch is, supposedly, retired.

But spend any time with Ms. Gadson-Birch, a community activist, business owner and grandmother in Charleston, S.C., and you may struggle, as I did, to keep up with her. She holds political meetings at local hotels. She wants to restart a local newspaper. She buttonholes friends, family members and strangers, reminding them to vote. She does all this while tapping at her Apple Watch or racing through town in a sleek S.U.V. “My husband said to me one day: ‘Girl! Where’d you learn to drive that way?’”

Many Americans have grown weary with politics and disengaged. Ms. Gadson-Birch, 77, is not one of them. Instead, she seems to have boundless energy while fighting political battles where winning appears impossible. At city council hearings and school board meetings, in diners and at church, Ms. Gadson-Birch is assiduously working to share a core belief: Voting is still worth it, even when making progress is slow and punishing work. She is not oblivious to the grim mood among Democratic voters, or the alienation of those who aren’t sure whether the Democratic Party — or democracy itself — holds meaning for them at all. Over a lifetime, Ms. Gadson-Birch has come to believe that American democracy can become whatever Americans make it.

One of 12 children, Ms. Gadson-Birch spent the first years of her childhood in Charleston’s public housing. On weekends, Ms. Gadson-Birch said, her father, who worked at a steel mill, would take the children to the city’s airport to watch the planes take off. “He would say, ‘I never got to fly, but you will,’” Ms. Gadson-Birch recalled. Downtown, there were certain restaurants in which they couldn’t eat, because the family was Black. In many stores, they couldn’t try on clothing or hats before purchasing them, because they were Black. “That really got to my mom,” she said.

In her elementary school, Wallace Consolidated, which was Black-only by law,students were required to buy the used textbooks the city’s white school no longer had any use for. “I can still see the worn covers, the name of the white school stamped on the spine,” Ms. Gadson-Birch told me. One year, Ms. Gadson-Birch said, her father couldn’t afford textbooks for all the children, so she had to go without.

Mostly though, Ms. Gadson-Birch is looking ahead. She has hopes of resurrecting a Black newspaper, The Charleston Chronicle, which closed in 2021 when its founder and publisher died. Charleston not only lost the newspaper but also its offices, where residents could meet with candidates.

Beverly Gadson-Birch walking in front of her home.
Gavin McIntyre for The New York Times

Over tea in a motel dining room, Ms. Gadson-Birch was listening patiently as John Singletary, who ran for mayor of North Charleston last year, and James Johnson, a longtime activist, talked at length about the need to unite Black voters in Charleston through a newspaper. Ms. Gadson-Birch nodded and then raised a more practical concern: “It’s going to be expensive. Who can we call to raise some money?”

Building Black political power is an uphill battle in South Carolina. The Republican Party dominates state politics and largely doesn’t court Black voters; the Democratic Party, the major vehicle for Black political aspirations, is shut out of power. “Every single statewide elected official is a Republican,” Gibbs Knotts, a political scientist at the College of Charleston, told me. “You’re supposed to have opportunities for competition here.”

Black South Carolinians like Ms. Gadson-Birch have continued to organize anyway. In 2020, they played a key role in delivering the Democratic nomination to Joe Biden. Then and now, these Americans have told me, their support for Mr. Biden has been born of a strategic view that he is the best candidate to beat Donald Trump. Some may fear that Mr. Biden, at 81, is too old for the grueling task of campaigning, or governing the country. Some are angry over Mr. Biden’s support of Israel in the war in Gaza and say they will not vote at all. Others are simply frustrated with the rising cost of living.

“I know it’s depressing for a lot of people. Some of them are working two jobs trying to make ends meet, working minimum wage. They say: ‘My vote is not going to matter. The politicians still do what they want to do,’” Ms. Gadson-Birch said. “But I tell them, ‘They’re going to continue to do it if you don’t make a change.’”

Ms. Gadson-Birch’s activism began in 1969, when she was living in New York City and saw the news on television about a hospital strike back home in Charleston. Black workers had walked off the job to protest unequal treatment; her mother was among them. Ms. Gadson-Birch returned to Charleston to walk the picket line with them. After living for years in the relative freedom of the Northeast, returning to South Carolina was jarring. One day, she sat toward the front of a Charleston bus, and both Black and white riders were staring at her, hard, she still remembers. “Because I’m coming back from the North, I’m not having it,” she recalled thinking. Ms. Gadson-Birch relished the fight, and decided to stay.

Eventually, she went on to college. She spent decades working in the public school system and started a successful heating and cooling business with her husband, a Navy veteran. The industry was dominated by men. “They were not used to dealing with females,” she told me. “It was terrible.” Together, she and her husband raised two children.

After decades of activism, traces of her work in Charleston are everywhere. Ms. Gadson-Birch is rarely the loudest voice in the room, but she has been involved in everything from mayoral races to the Emancipation Proclamation Association, which organizes an annual march on Jan. 1, commemorating the document that declared enslaved Americans living in states in rebellion against the United States to be free.

So it is not surprising these days to find Ms. Gadson-Birch regularly attending Charleston County school board meetings, where candidates backed by the right-wing group Moms for Liberty won control in 2022 and last year pushed a Black superintendent out of the role. Ms. Gadson-Birch and others went to work. In churches and phone calls, and on social media, they urged more Black residents to attend the meetings. In December, the board confirmed the appointment of a Black chief academic officer.

State Representative Wendell Gilliard, a Democrat who represents Charleston, says he believes the activism of Ms. Gadson-Birch and others has been a major check on the power of the right-wing movement in education and the campaigns to ban books that have unfolded in neighboring school districts.

I asked Ms. Gadson-Birch why she was not bereft witnessing efforts that threaten to undermine decades of struggle for basic civil rights. “My great-grandmother, they told her to count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap to vote,” she said. “When we think we’re making progress, we start going back, because they keep putting hurdles in the way. You expect that. But one inch at a time, we’ll get there.” The way to win, according to Ms. Gadson-Birch? Ignore the long odds, and keep organizing, protesting and voting anyway.“

Sunday, March 17, 2024

We Are Tech Experts. Here's How We Really Feel About Our Home Internet - CNET

We Are Tech Experts. Here's How We Really Feel About Our Home Internet

"Choosing between fiber, cable, DSL, satellite and 5G internet? We share our personal experiences with our home internet setups and how they stand up against our household needs.

Illustration by James Martin/CNET

Our parents may not have needed good internet service to survive, but we do.

That's because technology is advancing all around us at a rapid pace -- from see-through TVs to bendable phones to, yes, even AI-powered toothbrushes. As our technology advances, so do our internet needs. Most smart tech is Wi-Fi enabled -- and the more smart tech you add to your home, the better the internet connection you'll need. "Connectivity isn't just about the internet anymore," said Adam Auriemma, editor-in-chief of CNET. "New smart technologies mean that our broadband connection can help us monitor our health, energy usage, home security and so much more." 

When searching for the best internet plan to meet your home's technology demands, how do you know which to choose? How do you sift through all the techy jargon about speed, bandwidth, latency and so on? 

The first step is to hear about real-life experiences with each broadband connection option: fiber, cable, satellite, DSL and fixed wireless (5G). We pooled together advice from a group of CNET staffers. Together, we have a combined 45 years of experience testing and reviewing technology and broadband products, interviewing industry experts and talking to consumers about their needs and wants. 

Here are our best tips.

A picture of Eli Blumenthal
Eli Blumenthal 

As CNET's resident wireless carrier reporter, I've been following this space closely for over a decade. And these past few years, I've been particularly focused on the major carriers' 5G home internet offerings. For all the hype that 5G has so far failed to live up to, home internethas been a bright spot. 

Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T all offer some version of cellular-powered home internet to people around the country, providing competition and potentially a more affordable option. They've forced incumbent internet service providers to up their games if they want to keep your business. 

I've been testing T-Mobile 5G Home Internet since its inception, and I'm using it as I write this while working from home. Its speeds aren't as fast as cable, fiber or even millimeter-wave-based offerings (which I've also tried), but for the most part it's been, well, fine. Zooming, streaming and browsing have worked largely as they should with any provider, though gaming on an Xbox Series X (particularly with sports titles like NBA 2K24) has led to some hiccups, as have some video calls. 

I regularly watch YouTube TV; movies and shows from streaming services; and NBA games from NBA League Pass. Even with those more data-demanding tasks, T-Mobile has held its own. In January, my roommate and I used nearly a terabyte of data. 

There has been the occasional random drop in service, but again, for the most part it's been working as it should. Friends who come over and connect to Wi-Fi haven't noticed that this is 5G-powered, which is the point. This is supposed to work just like any connection, and it largely does. 

I do, though, have some reservations a couple of years in. 

I wish T-Mobile's speeds would be a bit more consistent, and as someone who's used more than a terabyte of data in a month, I'm a bit wary of the company's new policy that may slow down users if they go over 1.2TB in a given month during times of "congestion." And since I don't have T-Mobile as my wireless provider, I'm also keeping a close eye on price increases, which the carrier seems to be experimenting with once again (at least right now, for new users). 

But even if I need to switch to a different service in the future, I do appreciate that T-Mobile works in my area of New York City. Hopefully, its presence continues to add pressure to the market, so that even if I do need to make a move, Spectrum or Verizon will give me a better deal. 

A picture of David Anders
David Anders

I'd been covering broadband for a few years before moving into my current home, so I was familiar with fiber internet and excited to find that our home was fiber-ready. Even with my prior knowledge of fiber's capabilities, I didn't realize the difference it would make compared with my previous cable connection.

My mesh Wi-Fi router is set to run two speed tests daily, one in the morning and one in the evening. I consistently get over 900Mbps to the home with a plan that advertises max upload and download speeds of 940Mbps. 

Actual speeds in the home are lower, of course, but speed tests still land in the 300 to 500Mbps range on my phone, laptop and PS5 over a Wi-Fi connection. That's more than enough speed to accommodate the many devices connected to our network -- 37 according to my router app -- with lots of bandwidth available to add more if needed. The only time I've noticed a significant drop in speed is when downloading a large file (specifically a video game), but that's only temporary.

The symmetrical upload speeds are a nice bonus to fiber internet. I take online gaming semi-seriously, so fast upload speeds are a must, and my wife makes use of the connection to upload content to social media. We also work mostly from home, and the fast, consistent upload speeds make for seamless video calls.

The only real drawback is the price, but if you can work it into your household budget, fiber internet is definitely worth the cost. My fiber connection is always on, and it's always able to handle whatever I need it for. It's nice not having to think about your internet.

A picture of Joe Supan
Joe Supan 

I've been covering the broadband industry for six years, and for all of them, I've had the same cable internet service through Xfinity. Like most people, my internet connection is something I think about only when something's going wrong. Thankfully, that's been pretty rare for me. I can't remember the last time I saw a buffering wheel on my screen or a Zoom meeting glitch. 

I say this as someone who's constantly writing about cable internet's flaws -- namely, its low upload speeds. But truthfully, I don't need fast upload speeds. I hardly upload anything -- just my side of Zoom meetings, which requires only about 4Mbps.

A cable internet executive once told me the upload speed debate is like the Fast and Furious movies. "Those guys can flip their cars around without missing a beat at 80 miles an hour. That's like broadband. There's no reason to go in reverse as fast as you go forward."

I take that analogy with a grain of salt, but for me, it is true. Xfinity says I'll get 100Mbps upload speeds with my plan, but a quick speed test shows I'm actually getting 119Mbps as I write this. There are only a few devices in my apartment connected to the internet, and I don't play online games or stream content, so that's far more upload speed than I realistically need

Would I prefer to have fiber internet? Probably. But for me, it wouldn't be worth the hassle of switching. I never think about my cable internet, and that's the highest praise I can imagine. 

A Picture of Jim Hoffman
Jim Hoffman

There aren't a lot of CNET editorial staffers who have recent experience as DSL users, but I have the dubious distinction of being one of them, having been a member of the CNET copy desk for just over a decade. And I hate to say it, but if DSL is your best option for land-based internet service, I feel your pain. For more than 10 years after we moved to the digital backwater of the Dundee hills of Oregon (about an hour outside Portland), we suffered the indignities of ridiculously slow and unreliable DSL service from Verizon, then Frontier and later Ziply. (We never changed providers intentionally -- it was just that our service kept getting sold from one corporate entity to another.) I shouldn't make it sound like the entire Willamette Valley is bandwidth-challenged, just small backroad corridors here and there, which describes where I live. 

The various inconveniences of DSL were many. Slow bandwidth (less than 4Mbps down and never over 1Mbps up), and it seemed like the service was predestined to burp and blip and go down for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Zoom calls were possible sometimes, but good picture quality wasn't. Dealing with customer service was equally frustrating, particularly under Frontier. After a couple of years of this, our local technician gave me his direct number so I wouldn't have to keep navigating Frontier's phone tree cluster and go through their customary hurdles ("OK, turn off your modem... now wait 2 minutes and turn it back on...") before they would concede I really did have an issue and file a repair ticket. 

And because our telephone landline wire carried DSL (yes, I know), any problem farther up the line -- such as someone repairing a neighbor's service -- would cause ours to be cut off. Sometimes for hours. And don't get me started on the difficulties of streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime Video with such glacially slow speeds. Buffering was a regular interruption (but it did offer a chance to go to the fridge or take some other kind of convenience break). 

So much so that about three years ago, I threw up my hands and got on the waiting list for Starlink satellite service. A neighbor who's a notorious early adopter had signed up for Elon Musk's satellite ISP venture when it first became available and was crowing about its advantages over DSL (he'd been laboring with Frontier's/Ziply's abominable user experience too, so he knew what our lives had been like).

It took about nine months to get to the top of the waiting list, but it changed our lives for the better in so many ways. There's almost never a blip in service. Download speeds range from about 40Mbps to over 100 and uploads are between 10 and 15Mbps, which may seem slowish to those of you who've had cable or fiber for years, but believe me, it seems like a digital fire hose here. 

Granted, it costs more than DSL did (it's now $120 per month, which is $20 more than we were promised when I first got on the Starlink list and more than double what we paid to Ziply for internet), but it's worth it for such a quantum leap in speed and reliability, not to mention the hours I'm saving not sitting on hold waiting for tech support. The only glitch is that for some reason our IP address seems to indicate we're in Seattle, not Oregon, so we get geolocated ads for Washington-based services instead of Oregon. Oh, well.

Ironically, about a year after we got hooked up with Starlink and ditched Ziply entirely (we cut off the landline, too -- huzzah!), Ziply announced that its fiber service would be making its way up our gravel road. But after so much time with them working my last nerve, I'm not going back. 

If you're considering going the DSL route, I might suggest talking with your neighbors or asking on NextDoor what people's experience is with that provider in your area. If folks seem reasonably happy with it, you might be fine. But if their experience is like mine, see what you can find in the way of other technologies. And if you're a gamer or do a lot of work with graphics or other data-heavy applications, it may be worth spending the extra money for faster tech. While DSL was a good "broadband" option 15 to 20 years ago, things have changed and it seems to have trouble keeping up.

A picture of Adam Oram
Adam Oram

As a leader of CNET's Deals team, I cover the most up-to-date deals on technology products, including those that require an internet connection. And like many folks, I work remotely and need a solid internet connection myself. I live in a relatively out-of-the-way village in Northern England, so my options for getting such a connection are limited. Fiber hasn't made its way to my property yet and won't until Dec. 2025, and the speeds available via the phone lines aren't enough for video calls, streaming media or operating a home with a bunch of smart devices in it. 

Following a gradually worsening experience with a 5G home internet connection provided by UK carrier Three, I made the switch to satellite internet with Starlink at the start of 2024. I took some time to consider whether this was the right option for me, as the hardware is an expensive up-front cost (or a pricey long-term rental) and the service itself is twice the price of the 5G service I had before. But I've been satisfied with the speeds and reliability so far.

Starlink does offer a trial period of 30 days, so I set up the dish in my garden and ran the cable through a window for a few days to make sure the service worked effectively for me. I was super impressed with the speeds, so I went ahead and installed it at roof height once I was certain it would work well. Starlink provides the dish for self-install, which is great if you're comfortable with that, but it's less than ideal if you've got a fear of heights or generally lack skills with power tools. I fall into the latter group, which meant paying an installer.

Though I've been using Starlink fully for only a couple of months, I haven't experienced any major outages or disruption due to the weather, or had any reason to contact the support team. In fact, I haven't thought much about the service at all since getting it all wired in, which is more than I can say for my frustrating 5G service. I've seen high download speeds, of over 300Mbps, though more regularly I'll see speeds sit within the 75Mbps to 150Mbps range. And upload speeds are a pretty consistent 20Mbps, which is enough for my usage. It works great with my Eero mesh network setup, and I'm able to take Zoom calls, stream in 4K and run a smart home without issue.

There are some cons, though, in addition to the expensive hardware and service costs. There's a hidden extra cost in paying a professional to install your system or buying mounting hardware from Starlink or a hardware store. There's also no Ethernet port on the Starlink router, which means buying an extra adapter for something that should be table stakes. And the latency, or ping, of the Starlink service is relatively high, meaning it isn't ideal for online gamers who need lag to be as low as possible, though it's fine for Zoom calls. 

Though I'm not a fan of making a monthly payment to one of Elon Musk's companies, I'm not left with many choices either. Regardless, I expect I'll be happy using Starlink for the next couple of years until fiber is available for my home and I can switch. But if you can't get fiber, and your alternative options aren't providing a reliable experience, I can recommend Starlink  -- and satellite internet more broadly -- if you need to get online.

Headshot of writer Hallie Seltzer
Hallie Seltzer

I'm a 2023 college graduate who just moved into my first apartment last year -- which means that I recently had to buy my first internet package without the help of my parents. First adult purchase, am I right?

Before I started working on CNET's broadband team in 2023, I had no clue what type of internet I needed. It really didn't matter anyway since Comporium was one of the only ISPs that served my small town. Comporium is a cable provider that also offers a small fiber network, but of course, my address could only access its cable system.

Thankfully, it did seem to come with faster speeds and lower prices than T-Mobile Home Internet or satellite internet, which were my only other options for broadband.

My fiance and I are big-time streamers and gamers, and I work mostly remotely from our apartment. The tier we picked (and currently still have) is Comporium's 400Mbps plan for $50 per month, which comes with no data caps, contracts or equipment fees. Despite its simple service details, I haven't been impressed with the speeds I get, especially since my bill will jump after the first year. 

I've run a few different speed tests and discovered that our Wi-Fi is only reaching download speeds up to 120Mbps, which is a big difference from what I'm paying for. My speeds are significantly faster using an Ethernet cable, but it's not practical with multiple devices on one network. I know Comporium isn't to blame for my spotty Wi-Fi, but footing a $50 monthly bill for only 120Mbps of speed is a bummer. 

All this being said, I'd switch over to fiber internet in a heartbeat if my location was serviceable. Cable internet isn't the worst choice for residential internet -- satellite and DSL are much pricier and slower. However, I'd rather be paying nearly the same cost each month for AT&T Fiber and getting flat-rate pricing and symmetrical speeds.

Trisha Jandoc
Trisha Jandoc

I started high school with Spectrum cable internet and now I'm in my 20s. Before I switched to Verizon Fios early last year, Spectrum had been my internet provider for about seven years. As a new associate writer covering broadband, I still have much to learn about this topic. However, as someone who grew up using Spectrum, it carried me from studying for the SATs to reading my job-offer letter online. 

One of the main reasons why my family and I stuck with cable for so long was its consistency; we always knew what to expect. Everything was straight to the point: no contracts or data caps. Moreover, a Filipino household wouldn't be complete without our favorite teleseryes and Spectrum offering the Filipino channel as part of our cable and internet package was a plus! 

However, the hiking of prices over the years was what deterred us from continuing with Spectrum's services. Back when I was starting high school, my household, a family of five, lived off Spectrum's cheapest internet plan, which also meant it was the slowest. Yet, even if we were on the lowest plan tier, we were still paying upward of about $205 per month for an internet and TV bundle. Which was a hefty amount for our household. 

Besides Spectrum's price point, over the years my household consumed less and less cable TV and more streaming services. Factoring in this change led us to choose Verizon Fios' home internet service. But if your household still enjoys cable TV, Spectrum might be a viable option for you. New Spectrum customers can benefit from the better prices, too. After many years of rising costs with cable, our family found a better deal with Verizon Fios, with faster speeds and no term agreements. 

A picture of Katie Collins
Katie Collins 

While working for CNET, I've found that bringing a first-person perspective to our audience is a genuine way to help folks navigate a purchase decision. I'm here to talk about my experience with DSL internet and how it relates to my home technology.  

DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line and I admittedly haven't had this connection type since my early college years (the early 2000s). DSL served its purpose at that time. I wasn't streaming or connecting to many devices -- there was just my computer. I used it to browse the internet, log in to online class portals, perform online research for school, send and receive emails, and, even though it took a while by today's standards, download music to my MP3 player.  

The provider was Cablevision -- now Optimum -- and I can't recall the speed. But I distinctly remember the sound. When uploading or downloading a file, it sounded like a fax machine. And that's essentially what the technology was: it transferred information to and from a location through a phone line, just like a fax machine. 

Yes, DSL worked for college-age me. Candidly, it wouldn't work for me today. The main reason is the number of smart devices that connect in my household. DSL couldn't support our streaming, gaming, zooming and multitude of smart home devices -- at least at the same time. Even our baby tech -- such as the Hatch sound machine and Nanit baby monitor -- is all Wi-Fi enabled. 

If your tech needs seem similar to mine, check whether you can get fiber or cable. If DSL is the only connection type available to your home, see if satellite internet or 5G home internetis an option before settling for DSL. 

How to tell what connection type you have now 

First, aside from the name, speeds are the biggest indicator of cable, DSL or fiber internet. 

Internet connection typeHow to tell by the speed
FiberSymmetrical (or close) upload and download speeds.
CableMultiple speed options, possibly up to 1,000Mbps or higher, but uploads won't match downloads.
DSLWill probably present one, maybe two, speeds -- which are all but guaranteed to fall below 100Mbps.

Second, chances are you already know if you have a wireless internet connection. If you don't, here's how you can tell. 

Satellite internet 

For satellite internet, your provider is Hughesnet, Viasat or possibly Starlink, and you've got a satellite dish mounted somewhere on your property. 

Fixed wireless internet 

Similarly, fixed wireless internet, from providers such as Rise Broadband, requires mounting a small receiver, unless you have service from T-Mobile Home Internet or Verizon 5G Home Internet.

Fiber internet 

Determining the connection type with wired internet -- cable, DSL and fiber -- can be a bit more tricky, but a good speed test will often suffice. If your speed test returns similar upload and download speeds, congratulations, you have fiber internet. 

Seeing as how fiber is a more desirable product, most providers put "fiber" right in the name: AT&T Fiber, Frontier Fiber, Quantum Fiber, Ziply Fiber, and so on. Verizon hides it a bit better with "Fios," but that stands for "fiber-optic service."

DSL vs. cable 

Speed tests are a little less telling of cable versus DSL connections, but download speeds above 100Mbps are a good indicator of cable internet, because DSL typically isn't capable of such speeds. You can also take a look at what kind of cord is plugged into your modem. A phone line means DSL, while a coaxial cable, like what's used for cable TV, is, you guessed it, cable internet."

We Are Tech Experts. Here's How We Really Feel About Our Home Internet - CNET

How a sleuth defense attorney and a disgruntled law partner damaged the Trump Georgia case - The Washington Post

How a sleuth defense attorney and a disgruntled law partner damaged the Trump Georgia case

"In early September, a lawyer for one of former president Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case scheduled a call with the other defense attorneys to share what he thought could be a game-changing allegation. 

Nathan Wade, the lead prosecutor on the case, did not seem qualified for a job that was paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars, Manny Arora told his colleagues. And he’d heard that Wade was in a romantic relationship with Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D), potential grounds for Willis’s disqualification from the case.

The reaction was muted. Some of the lawyers didn’t even participate in the call. It was just three weeks after their clients had been indicted, and they were busy preparing their cases.

“Truthfully, I thought it was too salacious, and I thought it would irritate the judge,” said one defense lawyer, who like several other individuals spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the case. “Everybody had just been arraigned. We were working on discovery and getting our defense together.”

Arora, who represented lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, told the group that he didn’t have the bandwidth to investigate the romance claims, he later recounted to The Post.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis arrives at a news conference with prosecutor Nathan Wade on Aug. 14. (Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters)

But one lawyer on the call was interested. Ashleigh Merchant, who represents former Trump campaign aide Mike Roman, filed open-records requests for Wade’s contracts and billing invoices. She obtained a trove of financial records from his pending divorce case. And crucially, she leaned on a long-standing friendship with Wade’s former law partner, who claimed knowledge of all of it in hundreds of now-public text messages.

That effort culminated in a blockbuster pleading that Merchant filed in January accusing Willis of improperly hiring Wade while they were dating and then profiting by allowing him to take her on lavish vacations. The unusual pleading, which cited unnamed individuals and provided no evidence, called for Willis’s disqualification from the case and for the charges to be dismissed. In the weeks that followed, Merchant frantically rushed to try to find proof for her claims.

Ultimately, the gambit fell short when Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfeeruled Friday that Merchant and other defense attorneys had failed to prove Willis and Wade were in a relationship when she appointed him or other disqualifying conduct. But the ruling sharply criticized Willis and Wade, and demanded that one of them step away from the case.

Attorney Scott Grubman speaks with attorney Manny Arora during a hearing where their client, Kenneth Chesebro, accepts a plea deal in Fulton County, Ga., on Oct. 20. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool/Getty Images/AP)

And damage was done along the way. The matter dragged on for more than two months, delaying proceedings and making it less likely that the complicated conspiracy case will go to trial before the presidential election. It deeply embarrassed Willis and Wade, who were forced to testify about their relationship and answer profoundly personal questions from defense attorneys whose clients they had charged, all of which undermined public credibility of their prosecution of Trump and his allies. Wade resigned from the case a few hours after McAfee’s order dropped.

The accusations aren’t going away, as some of the defendants are expecting to appeal the decision — and the judge has suggested they can revisit the issue closer to a trial date. State lawmakers are investigating, and the headlines are unlikely to slow down.

Trump, meanwhile, has gleefully cheered on the drama and used it to undermine the legitimacy of the charges against him not only in Georgia, but in all four criminal cases against him, including two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

“The Fani Willis lover, Mr. Nathan Wade Esq., has just resigned in disgrace,” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“This is the equivalent of Deranged Jack Smith getting ‘canned,’ BIG STUFF, something which should happen in the not too distant future!!!”

Special prosecutor Nathan Wade at the Fulton County courthouse last month. (Mike Stewart/Pool/AP)

Two days after Trump and his allies were charged in connection with their attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, Willis asked the judge to set a March trial date. Soon after, Wade filed a notice of appearance as the case’s lead prosecutor.

Many of the defense attorneys had never heard of him — and they were increasingly convinced the general practitioner from the Atlanta suburbs, whose webpage advertises criminal defense, personal injury and family law, wasn’t qualified for the job. Arora, Chesebro’s lawyer, wanted to know how much Fulton County was paying Wade.

“We did open-records requests on all of it,” he told The Post. “I was just curious to see if all the I’s had been dotted and the T’s crossed.”

Arora discovered that Wade had never filed a signed oath of office after Willis hired him in November 2021, which Arora believed was a requirement under Georgia law. He began preparing a motion to dismiss the charges.

Wade sits during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case this month. (Alex Slitz/Pool/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Around the same time, defendant David Shafer, the former state GOP chairman and one of three Trump electors charged in the case, received a brochure in the mail from Wade & Campbell, Wade’s law firm. The brochure was generated automatically following Shafer’s indictment, but his lawyer thought it was wildly inappropriate for a private firm to solicit a client that one of its partners was prosecuting, even in error. That lawyer, Craig Gillen, filed a motion of his own.

McAfee — 34 years old and in his first year on the bench — quickly ruled against Shafer on Sept. 14 with what would become his familiarly sharp tone.

“Nothing indicates that Special Prosecutor Wade knowingly sent the mailer or specifically targeted the Defendants,” the judge wrote. “ … The Court feels comfortable inferring a lack of knowledge without the need for a protracted evidentiary hearing and briefing schedule.”

McAfee’s ruling against Chesebro on the oath of office several weeks later was even tougher, calling Arora’s filing a “parrot of a motion” and “blithely” written.

The rest of the defense team took note. Most of them remained wary of pursuing the potential impropriety of a romance between Willis and Wade. Now, they had reason to suspect McAfee would be skeptical, too, and they didn’t want to anger him with frivolous filings.

A defense attorney who loves digging

Merchant, a well-known Atlanta-area criminal defense attorney, took pride in being a vigorous investigator, a necessary skill when she was a public defender and had no budget. She quickly picked up where Arora had left off, firing off open-records requests seeking Wade’s contract as she sought to understand how he came to be appointed to the job.

Merchant and her husband and law partner, John, had been hired to represent Roman, a former campaign aide who was charged in part for his role in assembling presidential electors to sign documents falsely claiming Trump had won the election in Georgia. Roman spent much of his career as a Republican opposition researcher, digging up dirt on political rivals.

Unlike the other defense attorneys, Merchant had known Wade for years, professionally and socially. He was active in the legal and political scene in Cobb County, north of Atlanta, where Merchant lives and works. A former municipal judge, Wade had unsuccessfully runfor elected judge positions over the years. Merchant had endorsed his 2016 campaign against a Cobb County Superior Court judge, praising his “robust legal background.”

But Merchant didn’t understand how Wade had come to lead what could be the biggest criminal case in Georgia history. A former Fulton County public defender, Merchant was well-acquainted with Willis and many other prosecutors in her office because she’d tried cases against them for years. She wasn’t sure Wade had ever prosecuted a felony case, much less a complicated, multi-defendant proceeding brought under the state’s racketeering statute, as this one was.

A glance at a Fulton County budget website with some basic numbers showed that Wade had already been paid nearly $550,000. His law partners, Christopher Campbell and Terrence Bradley, who were also under contract with the office, had been paid close to $200,000 combined. She filed a request seeking those billing statements.

Wade’s earnings seemed excessive to Merchant, who claimed in recent public testimony that most lawyers appointed to handle public cases are paid far less — closer to $60 an hour, in her experience — or work on a pro-bono basis. Prosecutors later argued that Wade’s $250 an hour billing rate was below market and less than he’d charged on other cases.

By then, chatter about Wade’s legal credentials and earnings was spreading among local attorneys unaffiliated with the case.

“She’s spent almost a million taxpayer dollars on RICO advice from Nathan Wade, a dude who has never tried a RICO case,” Andrew Fleischmann, an Atlanta criminal defense attorney, posted on X on Sept. 2.

When someone responded asking if they should be familiar with Wade, Fleishmann replied: “Not really.”

On Sept. 11, the conservative Washington Examiner published a story about how much money the district attorney’s office had paid Wade and his two law partners, describing the arrangement as “unorthodox.”

“Willis chose Wade over career prosecutors who work on salaries,” it read, quoting an Atlanta attorney who described it as a “cash cow.”

The article served to jump-start Merchant’s research project by prompting a phone call from Bradley, an old friend who was concerned by the attention and wondered if he needed a lawyer.

Bradley told Merchant that Willis had called him to say various people were looking into the contracts.

“He called me because he was worried about it. And so we had a conversation, and he actually asked me, ‘Do I need a lawyer?’ … ‘What’s going on? What are you investigating?’” Merchant later recalled.

Willis later testified that she could “not recall” texting or talking on the phone with Bradley but said she could have. She was not specifically asked about the alleged September call.

Merchant said she told Bradley that she couldn’t represent him because she was representing Roman. He asked if her husband was available. “That’s a conflict, too,” Merchant said she told Bradley.

But she could still talk to him — and talk they did.

Terrence Bradley, special prosecutor Wade’s former law partner, looks at documents as he testifies in court on Feb. 27 in Atlanta. (Brynn Anderson/Pool/AP)

A few days later, Merchant ran into Bradley at the Cobb County courthouse. They joined two other attorneys in a conference room as they waited for plea hearings to begin in their respective cases.

Bradley told the group everything he knew about Willis and Wade, Merchant recalled.

The two had met at a judicial conference in October 2019 and quickly struck up a romantic relationship, Merchant says Bradley told the group — well before she was elected district attorney.

“I had a notepad,” Merchant said, “and I took notes on all the things to ask for open records.”

Merchant said she did not know at the time that Bradley was no longer Wade’s law partner. She also did not know that Bradley had served as Wade’s divorce attorney — or that he left the firm after being accused of sexually assaulting an employee and a client, allegations he denies.

Merchant said she believed Bradley was angry about how Wade had treated his estranged wife.

Sept. 18, 2023

Ashleigh Merchant

Any idea who I could get an 

affidavit from on the affair?

Terrence Bradley

No...no one would freely burn that bridge

From that point, Merchant grew to rely heavily on Bradley’s recollections to build her case. On Sept. 14, she texted Bradley with the first of more than 300 text messages between mid-September and early February as she sought to confirm the details Bradley had shared. A copy of the texts, obtained by The Post, were introduced as evidence in the disqualification proceedings.

In late September, prosecutors offered a plea deal to Roman, who was charged with seven counts including racketeering. He could plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge and a $5,000 fine in exchange for his cooperation, Merchant said.

Soon four other defendants took plea deals in rapid succession. But Roman declined. Behind the scenes, his lawyer was working to confirm Bradley’s claims, relentlessly pumping him for more leads to chase. She was running out of time. If Merchant was going to raise these accusations, she had to do so before Jan. 8, the motions deadline that McAfee had set.

Dec. 13, 2023

Ashleigh Merchant

I got some more confirmation about fani 

and Nathan 

I still can't get anyone to go on record 

But I also got the evidence that fani did 

not and does not have county approval 

to pay nathan 

She violated county policy left and right

Three weeks later, on Jan. 5, Merchant texted Bradley again, indicating she had gotten “stuff from the divorce lawyer. … I got a ton of stuff.” It was an apparent reference to the lawyer for Wade’s estranged wife, Joycelyn Wade, who later denied claims from Willis and others that she coordinated or colluded with Merchant.

Jan. 5, 2024

Ashleigh Merchant

I got stuff from the divorce lawyer

I got a ton of stuff

Terrence Bradley

Like what else

When will it drop

Monday is my filing deadline 

You won't be involved at all 

He finally turned over his financial docs 

which show he paid for fanis delta flight 

- it has her name on it - to California 

Napa vacation 

And he paid for a Royal Caribbean 

cruise for them

Merchant was building out her motion to disqualify Willis. She told Bradley that she now had records showing Wade paid for trips with Willis, including a Royal Caribbean cruise in November 2022 and a trip to Napa Valley in April 2023.

“You won’t be involved at all,” Merchant wrote. The next day, Bradley asked to see a “rough draft” of the motion.

Jan. 6, 2024

Ashleigh Merchant

To your knowledge has nathan 

ever prosecuted a felony? 

I can't find a single one

Terrence Bradley

Never in his life has he 

ever prosecuted a felony

That's what I found too

It's bad.

Send .e a rough draft

Me

Ok 

Promise not to share it? 

I don't want it leaked before I file it

I protected you completely btw

I promise

Within an hour, Bradley responded by asking Merchant to include how much he had been paid for his work for Willis’s office. He was worried that the omission could suggest he was a source. Merchant replied she had taken out his name.

“Add it back,” Bradley replied.

She asked him what he thought of the overall motion, which accused Willis and Wade of being in an “ongoing personal relationship” even while Wade was married and before Willis hired him. It described how the two were “believed to have cohabited in some form or fashion at a location owned by neither of them.”

It accused Willis of improperly benefiting financially from the hire, claiming that Wade had financed lavish vacations. And it said she had misused county funds by paying Wade as much as she had.

He replied: “Looks good.”

What Bradley never provided in all those text messages was actual evidence that the relationship had begun before Willis hired Wade. And Merchant had no other witnesses lined up yet, despite her plural description of “sources” in her motion.

The two mused that day about how Willis and Wade would react to the filing.

Bradley wrote: “They’re going to deny it.”

Merchant responded, “OMG! There have to be so many witnesses. If they deny it, they will become public liars. So many folks have seen them. Like most of the office staff!”

Jan. 8, 2024

Ashleigh Merchant

I am nervous 

This is huge

Terrence Bradley

You are huge

You will be fine

You are one of the best lawyers I know

Go be great

Bradley made suggestions on whom Merchant should subpoena: Willis’s security detail, members of her executive staff, her administrative assistant and members of the election case prosecution team.

“Subpoena them all,” he wrote.

On Jan. 8, hours before she would file the motion, Merchant texted Bradley.

She filed the motion that Monday afternoon. And all hell broke loose.

Willis speaks during a service at the Big Bethel AME Church on Jan. 14 in Atlanta. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP)

Waiting for Willis to respond

As the sensational accusations dominated local and national media for days, Willis and Wade kept quiet. Months earlier, when Trump had falsely accused Willis of having “an affair” with a “gang member,” she sent an email to staff strongly denying it and the message quickly leaked. This time, Willis would respond “appropriately in court filings,” her spokesman said.

As the days passed without a denial, even those close to Willis who initially assumed the accusations were false suddenly wondered if they could be true. The district attorney had campaigned on a platform of professional integrity and had publicly condemned anyone who would sleep with a subordinate.

One person thought Merchant’s filing was fabulous: Trump.

Through an aide, Trump relayed to his lawyer, Sadow, that he wanted him to call Merchant to congratulate her, according to two people familiar with the conversations. Sadow did.

But Sadow was still skeptical of the motion, which had not offered evidence of its central claims, so he didn’t immediately join it.

Six days after the bombshell had dropped, Willis finally broke her silence in a widely viewed speech before a historic Black church in Atlanta, where she accused her critics of playing “the race card” by questioning her right to appoint Wade, the only Black lawyer among the three special prosecutors she had hired.

Willis described herself as flawed and lonely — words quickly interpreted to mean the central allegation of a romance was true.

Without naming Wade, Willis strongly defended him, describing him as a lawyer of “impeccable credentials” with decades of experience.

The speech did not settle anything.

Merchant, meanwhile, was still on the hunt for corroboration. She pressed Bradley for any details about an Atlanta-area home and supposed rendezvous point for Willis and Wade. Bradley had told her the house was linked to “a girlfriend” of Willis’s, “like a bestie,” who had worked for the district attorney’s office. But Merchant still did not have a name as she sought to back up her allegations.

On Jan. 14, the same day as the church speech, Merchant texted Bradley a name.

Jan. 14, 2024

Ashleigh Merchant

Robin Bryant?

East point connection?

Terrence Bradley

Send me a pic

[Image attached]

robin bryant yeartie - Google Search

Yes that's her...that's the 

east point apartment person

She is key 

Thank you 

She also knows all about the 

media company payments

Merchant also chased random leads. She asked Bradley if he knew the names of Willis’s college-age daughters, recounting an anonymous tip that Willis was renting a house for her and Wade in one of their names.

The shocking allegations had ground the election case to a halt — and created a media circus. Wade was photographed outside his private law office carrying a gun. He and other prosecutors took back hallways at the courthouse to avoid reporters.

On. Jan. 19, an attorney for Joycelyn Wade filed a pleading in the divorce case with credit card statements potentially corroborating the allegation that Wade had paid for Willis’s travel. The statements showed that he had purchased airline and cruise tickets for himself and Willis on two occasions. Willis still declined to comment.

On Jan. 22, local and national news outlets descended on a hearing over the Wade divorce case at the Cobb County Courthouse. The judge agreed to Merchant’s request to unseal records in the case. She had suggested they would prove her allegations, but they did not.

Eight days later, Nathan Wade temporarily settled the bitter divorce case with his wife, avoiding having to testify.

But the crisis was not over. By now, Sadow, Trump’s lawyer, and several others had joined the motion to disqualify Willis — prompted in part what they claimed was Willis’s improper speech at the church, which they said would taint any future jury pool.

On Jan. 31, Merchant issued more than a dozen subpoenas including to Willis, Wade, Bradley, and several prosecutors and key members of Willis’s staff she wanted to question in an evidentiary hearing. Many were people Bradley had suggested.

Willis asked McAfee to cancel the evidentiary hearing. He didn’t. It was set for Feb. 15.

In a response, Merchant suggested Willis and Wade had lied. She said Wade and Willis “began more than just a friendship” when they met at the 2019 conference. She also texted Bradley that she would be sending him a subpoena for the hearing, writing that she hoped not to use it but that “it would look fishy” if she didn’t.

“I’m okay with it,” Bradley replied.

Willis testifies during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case on Feb. 15 in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool/Reuters/AP)

In the meantime, Bradley appeared to be growing increasingly nervous that he would be publicly identified as Merchant’s source.

He began replying less and less to Merchant’s texts.

On Feb. 3, he texted Merchant that he’d gotten a voice mail from Gabe Banks, a former prosecutor Willis had unsuccessfully asked to lead the case. Bradley told Merchant that Banks thought he was Merchant’s source.

She later testified to a Georgia Senate committee that Bradley was “upset” by the message.

“They were trying to figure out if it was him, and they were trying to silence him,” Merchant claimed.

The next day, Merchant said Bradley told her that he had gotten a call from his best friend, also an Atlanta lawyer, who said Wade had asked him to relay a message.

“Remind him of his privilege,” Wade allegedly said, referring to Bradley’s one-time role as his divorce lawyer.

A few days after that, Bradley stopped communicating with Merchant altogether. And Merchant finally outed her source in a motion filed Feb. 9, saying Bradley would “refute” claims by Willis and Wade that their romantic relationship began after he was named to the election case.

The filing prompted McAfee to refer to Bradley as Merchant’s “star witness.”

But on the witness stand, he was anything but. Called as the first witness on that Thursday morning, Bradley’s appearance was interrupted when Wade’s personal attorney asserted privilege.

It was actually Robin Bryant-Yeartie, Willis’s former colleague and estranged friend, who delivered what some defense attorneys initially thought would be the nail in the coffin for Willis’s attempts to maintain the case. Appearing on a large TV screen from her home, Bryant-Yeartie said there was “no doubt” in her mind that Willis and Wade were involved in a romantic relationship beginning in late 2019. She testified that she had talked to Willis about Wade and had personally seen them “hugging, kissing” before Nov. 1, 2021 — the date Wade joined the Trump case.

Seated in the gallery, a defense attorney turned to a colleague and silently pumped his first in celebration.

That same day, Wade and Willis also took the stand, as defense lawyer after defense lawyer questioned each of them about their sex lives and personal finances. Wade said Willis had repaid him for the travel in cash, a statement that prompted Shafer, sitting at the defense table, to chortle aloud. “Mr. Shafer, you’ll step out if you do that again,” McAfee interjected.

For her turn, Willis accused Merchant of being “dishonest” and of making “highly offensive” claims about her and Wade. At one point, she waved copies of Roman’s filings in the case, describing them as full of “lies, lies, lies.”

“You’ve been intrusive into people’s personal lives,” Willis told Merchant. “You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial. No matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”

It became so heated that McAfee called a brief recess. He would later describe Willis’s testimony that day as “unprofessional.”

When Bradley returned to the witness stand Friday, he initially denied having communicated with Merchant about Wade and Willis, suggesting he had spoken to her through a third party. When presented with a copy of the texts, he acknowledged he had sent the messages and then tried to claim privilege to avoid answering questions.

More than a week later, Bradley was forced to return to the stand a third time after McAfee ruled that privilege didn’t prevent it. The defense table was abuzz with anticipation. But Bradley did not deliver what they had been hoping for. He said he had no “personal” knowledge of when the relationship between Wade and Willis began. And he said much of what he shared with Merchant was nothing more than speculation.

It was the undoing of Merchant’s months-long quest.

Bradley’s text messages never established “the basis for which he claimed such sweeping knowledge” of Wade’s private life, McAfee wrote Friday in his order denying Merchant’s motion.

The Lewis R. Slaton Courthouse in Atlanta. (Elijah Nouvelage for The Washington Post)

“The Court finds itself unable to place any stock in the testimony of [Terrence] Bradley,” McAfee wrote. “His inconsistencies, demeanor, and generally non-responsive answers left far too brittle a foundation upon which to build any conclusions.”

McAfee didn’t stop there. He harshly criticized Willis and Wade, calling the church speech “legally improper” and Wade’s explanation for why he did not admit the relationship in his divorce proceedings “patently unpersuasive.” He characterized the claim of cash payments “not so incredible as to be inherently unbelievable” — yet described an “odor of mendacity” over the whole affair.

A few hours later, Wade offered a letter of resignation to “the Honorable Fani T. Willis.” She accepted it.

Merchant issued a statement saying McAfee should have disqualified Willis’s office. But she also called the opinion “a vindication that everything put forth by the defense was true, accurate and relevant to the issues surrounding our client’s right to a fair trial.”

Bailey reported from Atlanta."

How a sleuth defense attorney and a disgruntled law partner damaged the Trump Georgia case - The Washington Post