Georgia lawyer to be released from prison after US Supreme Court ruling

“He knows this isn’t the end. He knows we still have additional litigation,” she said.

In her brief to the court, Martin said the government does not concede that Calhoun’s obstruction charge is automatically overturned by the Fischer opinion.

“The Supreme Court remanded the case to the court of appeals for further proceedings,” Martin wrote. “Through those further proceedings, the appeals court will interpret the scope of the statute further, which may or may not include circumstances of this case, where the defendant intended to stop the certification and interfere with the voting and balloting underlying the certification.”

Calhoun was among the first rioters to enter the Capitol. Once inside, he joined the mob as it progressed as far as the hallway outside the office of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Before going to the Capitol, Calhoun spent weeks posting vicious, violent and obscene rants on social media directed at incoming President Joe Biden and Democrats in general.

“We have a communist revolution happening before our very eyes to steal this election,” he wrote in a social media post a day after the presidential election. “Americans get ready to rise up and kill the Democratic communists before they do it to us.”

In his trial, prosecutors presented the social media posts as evidence that Calhoun entered the Capitol to stop the certification.

In the years since the riot, Calhoun’s circumstances have changed. He got married and moved with his new wife to Alabama before sentencing. He closed his Georgia law office after his license was suspended. Sherman-Stoltz said he is looking forward to having the felony removed from his record “so he can have his bar license reinstated and move on from this situation.”

Other Georgia defendants charged with obstruction of an official proceeding also are seeking to have their records cleared.

Bruno Cua of Milton was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after being convicted on charges of obstruction and assaulting a police officer. Cua completed his sentence in May but has appealed both convictions. After the Supreme Court ruling, Cua’s attorney asked the appeals court to set a briefing schedule for later this year.