Georgia high court wants tougher discipline for lawyer who took part in Jan. 6

The Georgia Supreme Court rejected recommendations that a Middle Georgia attorney be publicly reprimanded for his actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot and suggested that he be disbarred instead.

In a unanimous opinion released Wednesday, the justices wrote that William McCall Calhoun knew he was breaking the law when he joined the first wave of supporters of President Donald Trump who forced their way into the Capitol. His actions on that day, many of which Calhoun posted in messages and videos to social media, were “very serious” and “reflect adversely on his fitness as a lawyer.”

The State Bar of Georgia suggested to the court that a public reprimand would be enough punishment for Calhoun, but the justices thought otherwise. They concluded “it is hard for us to see how anything less than disbarment can be accepted here.”

The 63-year-old criminal defense attorney’s license to practice law was suspended following his March 2023 conviction in federal court in Washington, D.C., of a felony charge of obstruction, along with four misdemeanors relating to his entry into restricted areas of the Capitol. Following his trial, U.S. District Court Dabney L. Friedrich sentenced Calhoun to 18 months in prison.

His felony conviction was reversed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2024 that the U.S. Justice Department improperly applied the felony obstruction statute to hundreds of Jan. 6 cases. Following Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025, Calhoun was among some 1,500 defendants to receive a blanket presidential pardon for their actions during the riot.

But Georgia’s top court wrote that the pardon was immaterial because “pardons do not prevent disbarment for the underlying activity that formed the basis of the crime that was later pardoned.”

In their opinion, the justices cited Calhoun’s numerous social media posts as evidence that he “intended to participate, willingly and knowingly, in a violent takeover of the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election and that he sought to interfere with the administration of justice.”

A screen capture from a prosecution exhibit in the case against Americus attorney William McCall Calhoun Jr. shows a post by Calhoun on Parler of Jan. 6 rioters inside the Capitol Rotunda and Calhoun's threat that they were "coming back armed for war." (Courtesy of U.S. Department of Justice)

Calhoun, who had a practice based in Americus, was prolific on social media in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, frequently posting violent threats to Democratic officials and voters if Trump did not win.

“As part of the anti-communist counter revolution we’ve got to get serious about stopping them by force of arms,” Calhoun wrote weeks before the election on the conservative social media site Parler.

Calhoun’s posts continued during and after the riot on Jan. 6. In one, he boasted the crowd “physically took control of the Capital (sic) building in a hand to hand hostile takeover.”

He wrote that he was among “the first two hundred to rush up the steps and inside after the Vanguard had clashed hard with the police and made them retreat” and that the mob would return to Washington “armed for war.”