A pardoned Jan. 6 defendant convicted of assault on a Metro train was arrested again in Arlington court after a judge revoked his bond, court records show.
Bryan Betancur was taken into custody in court Thursday after a judge ordered his bond revoked, Fox 5 DC reported. He faces a bond hearing set for Friday, Sept. 25.
Court records show he had been released only days earlier, on Tuesday, Sept. 22, following an assault conviction tied to a filmed incident on a Silver Line Metrorail train in Arlington.
Betancur was convicted in August after he filmed himself touching a woman’s hair on the train. He received a 180-day prison sentence with credit for time served. The woman told a judge she did not realize what had happened until the video spread online and colleagues flagged it for her.
He had first been arrested in March in connection with the assault and battery on that Arlington Metro train.
Betancur was one of the defendants charged and convicted of illegally entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. President Donald Trump pardoned him in 2025. Court records also show he was on probation for burglary at the time of the riot and had violated an unrelated anti-stalking order.
Trump has used the pardon power in other recent matters as well, including cases detailed in coverage of diesel emissions tampering pardons and separate clemency actions.
The latest court trouble did not end with the Arlington assault file. The New York Post reported that Betancur was among roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants pardoned early in Trump’s second term, and that he faced additional simple assault charges in D.C. Superior Court linked to Metro incidents and videos he posted.
Moments after he left the Arlington District Courthouse, where he pleaded not guilty and posted bond, Metro Transit Police took him into custody again on an outstanding D.C. warrant, the Post reported.
Back in the Arlington matter, court officials said the judge revoked bond and Betancur was arrested in court Thursday. He is due in court Friday, Sept. 25, for the bond hearing.
Readers following clemency fights have also seen parallel debates in pieces on recent batches of Trump pardons and on how other states handle high-profile mercy decisions.
The sequence is straightforward in the record: Capitol illegal-entry conviction, 2025 pardon, March arrest on the Metro assault, August conviction and 180-day sentence with time-served credit, Sept. 22 release, then Thursday’s in-court arrest after the bond revocation.
Public debate over pardons continues in other lanes too, from scrutiny of pardon-attorney controversies to separate state-level clemency fights such as the Minnesota case involving a convicted offender.
None of that changes the local file in front of the Arlington judge. A man already convicted for filming himself putting his hands on a woman on public transit is again in custody, with another hearing on the calendar.
Law-and-order voters expect the same standard for everyone after the courtroom door closes: show up, follow the rules, and do not put hands on strangers on the train.