Georgia man arrested after Capitol riot had assault weapons, hundreds of ammo rounds
The Americus attorney accused of storming the U.S. Capitol after claiming to have been among the rioters who went inside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6 was on Thursday ordered to remain behind bars while the case against him plays out.
The bespectacled, gray-bearded and ponytailed William McCall Calhoun Jr., shackled at the waist and feet and wearing a soft-blue surgical mask, sat in federal court in Macon for a three-hour detention hearing where a judge ruled Calhoun a potential danger were he released from custody.
Calhoun, 58, was escorted in by five U.S. Marshals and represented by an appointed lawyer. He said nothing for the record — though he was never asked to — as prosecutors laid out alleged evidence against him in their efforts to keep him jailed.
Calhoun was arrested in Macon on Friday after federal agents tracked him down at his sister’s house. Though he maintains a home inside his Sumter County law practice some 75 miles away, he had been staying at his sister’s place for a week or so in the wake of the Washington D.C., riot.
He faces charges that include violent entry and entering a restricted building.
Rifles, shotguns and ammo found in house
In his bedroom at the Macon house where he was arrested, investigators said they found a Glock pistol and brass knuckles on the nightstand along with four rifles, including a pair of AR-15-style weapons, and four shotguns. Ammunition boxes nearby were said to contain hundreds if not more than 1,000 rounds.
Agents were also said to have found a scarf and a baseball cap they used confirm his identity as one of the people in photographs and videos taken of the Capitol mob.
On the witness stand Thursday, FBI agent Timothy D. Armentrout — who had been informed by a tipster in November of “threatening” social media posts purportedly made by Calhoun — read aloud a number of the remarks.
One on Calhoun’s Facebook account the day of the Capitol attack included a picture of a throng outside the building, which read, “We’re going to get inside the Capitol before this ends.”
Another posting on his Facebook page from Jan. 6 mentioned how “we overran multiple police barricades and stormed the building. ... Somebody yelled push through, so we did.”
The same post mentioned a breach of Pelosi’s office: “Crazy Nancy probably would have been torn into little pieces but she was nowhere to be seen.”
Other posts linked to Calhoun from days prior included the phrases “stack up body bags,” “sling hot lead” and “slaughter.” Calhoun also boasted online of being able to make a “head shot” with a rifle from 200 meters.
Prosecutors showed a Twitter post that they say Calhoun wrote a couple of weeks before the election: “When Trump makes the call, millions of heavily armed, pissed off patriots are coming to Washington.”
Calhoun’s lawyer, Tim Saviello, referring to his client’s presence in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, said in court Thursday that Calhoun “admits he trespassed but did it for the love of his country.”
Saviello called Calhoun’s sister, Mary Calhoun, to the stand to explain that were her brother to be set free to await indictment or trial that he would be welcome in her home.
“He wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she said.
She said she had kept her brother’s dog while he went to Washington and that before he left she asked William Calhoun if he was taking any weapons. She said he told her he was not, that it was illegal.
“I felt like it was going to be OK,” she said of the trip.
A ‘dangerous and violent ideology’
In the end, despite William Calhoun’s lack of a criminal history and people he knows vouching for his character in affidavits, magistrate Judge Charles H. Weigle said Calhoun’s statements on social media show “that he has been corrupted by or seduced by the dangerous and the violent ideology that considers the United States to be in a civil war ... and anyone that voted Democrat to be worthy of execution.”
Weigle described Calhoun’s online language as “extremely violent” and included such words and phrases as “slaughtering,” “head shots,” “hanging President Biden” and “tearing Nancy Pelosi to shreds.”
And when Calhoun was arrested, the judge added, he was “armed to the teeth.”
Weigle went on to say that “the biggest issue” Calhoun faced when it came to determining whether he was a threat to society pretrial was this: That Calhoun had acted on claims he would be at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“You bragged about it,” the judge said. “You said that it was your patriotic duty. ... And crossed a sacred, sacred line. That was an act of extreme violence by every single person (there).”
‘You don’t respect the Capitol’
Weigle spoke of the august, century-old courtroom they were inside Thursday at the corner of Third and Mulberry streets in downtown Macon.
The judge said such buildings, not unlike the Capitol, “reflect the majesty of the law and the Constitution of the United States. ... And the Capitol building is the pinnacle of that. When you and your friends went in there and tore the place to shreds, (and) killed five people, including a police officer, you showed that ... there was nothing that would hold you back except force.”
The result, Weigle said, was that 25,000 National Guard members had to stand guard over Wednesday’s presidential inauguration, a fact the judge termed “a shame ... for our entire country.”
Weigle, in closing, told Calhoun, “You don’t respect the Capitol Police, you don’t respect the Capitol building of the United States, I don’t have any reason to believe that you will respect anything I tell you to do. ... I have no comfort with sending a probation officer to your house to meet with you. I would be afraid for their life. I would be afraid for my life ... based on what you’ve said and what you’ve done.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 21, 2021 at 3:29 PM with the headline "Georgia man arrested after Capitol riot had assault weapons, hundreds of ammo rounds."