ATLANTA — William McCall Calhoun, a Georgia attorney who was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol, will not be allowed to practice law in Georgia for the immediate future.
The Georgia Supreme Court issued a ruling on Tuesday suspending Calhoun, who was convicted back in March of charges related to Jan. 6 including obstruction of an official proceeding; restricted building or grounds; violent entry or disorderly conduct.
Calhoun has appealed his federal conviction in the case. The Georgia Supreme Court, in its ruling, determined he would be suspended pending the outcome of that appeal.
The Court highlighted how at a hearing he was asked if he had remorse and he responded: "Why would I have remorse?"
The state Supreme Court also sided with a special master tasked with adjudicating Calhoun's Bar status, rejecting several arguments he made that he hadn't violated state rules.
Of one such argument - Calhoun's claim he had not violated rules concerning lawyers who are convicted of a felony, because he was found guilty by a judge from a bench trial and not a jury, thus there was no "verdict" - the Court's ruling noted:
"We see no reason judicial determinations of guilt would be excluded from the term “verdict,” as it is used in Rule 1.0 (e)... Moreover, we know of no 20 reason for treating the two differently in matters of attorney discipline. In sum, we can discern no basis for assigning to the term “verdict” the stricter meaning that would exclude convictions entered on a judge’s finding of guilt."
Calhoun gained notoriety for his alleged role in breaching Nancy Pelosi's office. Federal prosecutors said he posted on Facebook after the Jan. 6 riots that that if his group had found Pelosi, she "probably would have been torn into little pieces."
In 2021, a federal judge delivered a remarkable admonishment of Calhoun in denying him pretrial release.
"What we have, first of all, is the defendant's own statements, made publicly on social media, stupidly, which revealed that he has been... seduced by a dangerous and violent ideology that considers the United States to be in a state of civil war - anyone that voted for a Democrat to be worthy of execution, there's government officials and agents that are part of a 'deep state' and need to be opposed by so-called patriots - the language used in those posts is extremely violent."
Calhoun had rejected a plea deal prior to being convicted.
His suspension in Georgia has been imposed by the state Supreme Court "until the final disposition of his direct appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and until further order of this Court."