Major act of defiance against Trump in GOP-controlled state flagged by legal scholar
Despite growing increasingly unpopular among voters, President Donald Trump has maintained a firm grip on the Republican Party, though one legal scholar on Monday highlighted a rare and “truly heartening” instance of defiance that he characterized as a model for future GOP resistance.
That act of defiance was carried out by the Georgia Supreme Court, which last month unanimously voted to uphold the disbarment of a convicted Jan. 6 rioter, despite Trump having pardoned them.
“Georgia, we must always remember, is where Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger resisted Trump’s bullying demand to 'find' 11,780 votes after the 2020 election,” wrote Steven Lubet, author, legal scholar and law professor at Northwestern University, in an op-ed published in The Hill Monday.
“The Republican-led state Supreme Court has now exemplified the same integrity by disregarding Trump’s blanket pardons and recognizing the true nature of the Jan. 6 attack. It was not a ‘day of love’ or a ‘normal tourist visit,’ or even a ‘political protest that got out of hand.’”
That convicted Jan. 6 rioter is William McCall Calhoun, an attorney and former progressive who pivoted to the right in early 2020 to become a devout supporter of Trump.
“I have tons of ammo,” Calhoun wrote on social media just after the 2020 election, according to Lubet. “Gonna use it too – at the range and on racist democrat communists.”
Calhoun was “among the first” to illegally enter the Capitol on Jan. 6 and eventually made his way to the office of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), later writing that Pelosi “probably would have been torn into little pieces” were she to have been in her office that day.
Calhoun was ultimately charged and convicted of several crimes, including one felony, and sentenced to 18 months in prison and stripped of his ability to practice law. After receiving a pardon from Trump, Calhoun sought to have his disbarment reversed, only to be met with a particularly scathing rebuke last month by Georgia’s highest court.
“While Calhoun may have ultimately been pardoned for federal offenses, pardons do not prevent disbarment for the underlying activity that formed the basis of the crime that was later pardoned,” the court wrote in its ruling. “The criminal acts committed by Calhoun reflect adversely on his fitness as a lawyer.”
The Georgia Supreme Court’s blunt ruling, and by extension, explicit rebuke of Trump, Lubet argued, was at least one sign that the GOP still has the capability of standing up to Trump.
“Jan. 6 was an insurrection, and insurrectionists will not be practicing law in Georgia any time soon,” Lubet wrote.