180 days. That is the sentence that Bryan Betancur received on August 13, 2026, for one count of simple assault.
The January 6th rioter, pardoned by Trump, was found guilty of stroking a woman’s hair on the Metro, filming it and posting it to Twitter.
“It’s just a creepy thing to do,” the judge said.
He’s done far worse, like threatening to shoot up schools, but this story went viral, because it was icky and thousands of people ride the Metro every day. Washington doesn’t have many sacred institutions anymore but if there is one it is Metro, a vital service that people around the region rely upon to get them to work without being molested by a stranger.
For someone who has followed this creepster for years (he stalks my friend Anarchy Princess), it was kind of amazing to watch this story blow up into viral fame, rocketing from Twitter to Washingtonian Problems to the local news.
He was briefly famous. In March, he was arrested in MD, VA and DC – the rare trifecta. Then, while on pretrial release, with a GPS monitor attached to his ankle, he went looking for journalist Amanda Moore at the Supreme Court (where I saw him and yelled at him) before finding and stalking her outside the Polymarket Bar (2026 is a weird year) while insisting that she was stalking him. That is what got him finally taken off the streets.
Reminder: Trump and his new Attorney General, Todd Blanche, want to give millions in taxpayer money to criminals like Betancur.
He was also at the January 6th Memorial March earlier this year, where he walked around with a framed copy of Trump’s pardon, like it was a religious icon. His dumbassery earned him a spot in multiple photos from this parade of the damned.
Photographer Cory Cullington bet him he’d be in jail by the end of the year. Betancur took that bet and raised it to $10,000. He’s that much of an idiot.
Cullington seems unlikely to collect. Sentenced to 180 days, Betancur has already served around 125 in the DC Jail. But he faces trial for stalking Amanda Moore, violating an anti-stalking order against Anarchy Princess and for another Metro hair touching assault, this time in Virginia. At the end of his trial, his attorney quit, apparently tired of him.
I will now praise Judge Jeanine Pirro. Yes, she brought bogus charges against David Hearn in the Reflecting Pool case but in this matter, she delivered a conviction, even though the US Attorney Office seems staffed with the Teen Lawyer Squad and sacrificial lambs from other agencies.
“Today’s verdict underscores our commitment to protecting the safety and dignity of every passenger who relies on our public transit system,” said U.S. Attorney Pirro. “No crime is too small when it involves a person’s sense of security.”
Betancur did the impossible: unite Americans in a shared sense of revulsion.
Leave a Reply