The Georgia attorney, who was charged with a crime for his role in the U.S. Capitol invasion on Jan. 6, was released from prison last month and is back practicing as a lawyer in southwest Georgia, his attorney said.
A federal judge in Washington on March 10th ordered the release of W. McCall Calhoun Jr. from Americus. Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Calhoun to stay with his sister in Macon, but allowed him to go to his office and courts to represent clients. He can also attend doctor’s appointments.
“He’s resumed his trial,” said Calhoun’s attorney Jessica N. Sherman-Stoltz of Gum Spring, Virginia. The pleading for his release listed 67 clients who have represented Calhoun on a range of matters including aggravated assault, theft, DUI and drug possession.
“He’s excited to have this resolved … and rebuild his reputation,” added Sherman-Stoltz.
Although Calhoun told the Daily Report in a Jan. 12 interview that he had only entered the Capitol while the police were watching, he bragged on social media that he overran police barricades and flooded the building. Describing how the office door of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was kicked in, Calhoun wrote, “Mad Nancy probably would have been torn to bits, but she was nowhere to be seen – then a Swat team showed up and we undressed back to the rotunda. “
Sherman-Stoltz said Thursday that timestamped videos will show that Calhoun was “in the second wave” of former President Donald Trump supporters who entered the Capitol but did nothing violent. Regarding his comments on Pelosi, Sherman-Stoltz said, “He was just kind of talking,” expressing what he saw and felt of the crowd, but that he was unrelated to any of these potential crimes.
Calhoun faces three charges, the most serious of which is obstruction of federal trial – in this case, attempting to disrupt Congress certification of the electoral college vote.
Prosecutors denied Calhoun’s release, arguing that he was an escape risk and a threat to the community. They reiterated the concerns of US magistrate Charles Weigle of the Middle District of Georgia in January when he rejected Calhoun’s call for a bond.
Weigle noted that the evidence “points to a persistent and escalating pattern of threats and threatening behavior, culminating in the violent entry of a mob into the United States Capitol”.
Weigle quoted Calhoun’s social media posts in which threats such as “I have tons of ammunition” were made. I will use it too – at the shooting range and with racist-democratic communists “and” My AR15 setup makes headshots at 200 meters no problem. You have no idea what’s coming. “
Friedrich’s reasons for Calhoun’s release were not available in online records. Sherman-Stoltz had argued that Calhoun was at risk of contracting COVID-19 in a prison cell and that his prostate cancer and high blood pressure could make that infection worse. She also claimed that Calhoun posed no escape risk or danger to the community.
Among the 32 pages of affidavits in support of his release was one from Cordele’s attorney G. Russell Wright, who said he served as co-attorney with Calhoun and knew his family. “I believe he will pose minimal risk of escape,” Wright wrote. “I also believe he poses no risk of committing additional crimes or poses a threat to the community in general.”
According to court records, Calhoun, who last fall called for then-candidate Joe Biden to be hanged on social media, surrendered the weapons cache he owned when he was arrested in January.
Calhoun was represented first by the Federal Defender Office in Macon and then by a court-appointed attorney in Washington. Sherman-Stoltz said he found her through news articles about a case in which she was representing a man suing Charlottesville authorities for failing to protect him during the 2017 Unite the Right riots. Her client was a counter-demonstrator who claimed that Ku Klux Klan members beat him and sprayed him with chemicals.
She said part of Calhoun’s case was not brought to justice because “it is taking much longer” than usual for prosecutors to provide their investigative material and solicitor for several hundred defendants charged with the Capitol invasion. One problem appears to be protection orders over the amount of video used as evidence, she added.
The district attorney in Calhoun’s case is Adam Alexander, a US assistant attorney based in Anchorage, Alaska. Temporarily assigned to work on the Capitol cases, Alexander said he could not comment on the case.
Sherman-Stoltz said a challenge to Calhoun’s resumption of practice is that “he doesn’t feel safe going back to his office.”
The court’s pleadings comprised 27 pages of “harassing and threatening” emails and other messages that Calhoun received.
Paula Frederick, General Counsel of the State Bar, told the Daily Report in January that the Bar Association cannot confirm or deny the existence of complaints against any particular attorney. “The Bar Association only has jurisdiction over lawyers in their professional lives, so the rules do not cover personal conduct unless a member is convicted of a crime,” she added.
