South Georgia lawyer convicted in Jan. 6 case

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge Monday found Georgia attorney William McCall Calhoun Jr., guilty of a felony obstruction charge and four misdemeanors related to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.

Prosecutors charged Calhoun with obstruction of an official proceeding, a felony carrying up to 20 years in prison. But U.S. District Court Judge Dabney L. Friedrich on Monday said despite the felony conviction, she plans to diverge from federal sentencing guidelines and sentence Calhoun more in line with similar Jan. 6 defendants who had been charged with misdemeanors.

She said federal prosecutors proved the felony obstruction charge against Calhoun, but she wanted to maintain sentencing consistency with other defendants. She questioned why other defendants who conducted themselves similarly to Calhoun on Jan. 6 hadn’t been charged with more serious charges.

She expressed “frustration” with the inconsistency with how the Department of Justice had charged Jan. 6 defendants.

“This case in the court’s view appears to be much more in line with the misdemeanor cases it has seen,” Friedrich said.

Calhoun, a criminal defense attorney from Americus, Georgia, was among the very first of the rioters to enter the U.S. Capitol through a breached door on the Senate side of the building, making it as far as then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.

In his trial held March 1-2, prosecutors seized on Calhoun’s social media posts to make their case that he came to Washington to attack the Capitol and stop the certification of the election and encouraged others to do the same.

Calhoun, who testified in his own defense, claimed he was merely following the crowd as it walked from the rally held by Donald Trump to the Capitol grounds.

“I did not and, even now, I don’t believe I did violate any felony statute because there’s nothing — there’s no act involved to commit a felony,” he said. “I mean, there’s not anything I did except walk through the Capitol.”

Calhoun, 59, is believed to be the only practicing attorney among the more than 800 Jan. 6 defendants across the country.