A man who threatened to kill Democratic election officials pleads guilty

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado man repeatedly made online threats about killing the top elections officials in his state and Arizona — both Democrats — as well as a judge and law enforcement agents, according to a guilty plea he entered Wednesday.

Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, acknowledged to a federal judge in Denver that his comments were made “out of fear, hate and anger,” as he sat dressed in a khaki jail uniform before pleading guilty to one count of transmitting interstate threats. He faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced on Feb. 3.

Brockbank’s case is the 16th conviction secured by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which Attorney General Merrick Garland formed in 2021 to combat the rise of threats targeting the election community.

“As we approach Election Day, the Justice Department’s warning remains clear: anyone who illegally threatens an election worker, official, or volunteer will face the consequences,” Garland said in a statement.

Brockbank did not elaborate Wednesday on the threats he made, and court documents outlining the plea agreement were not immediately made public. His lawyer Thomas Ward declined to comment after the hearing.

However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado said in statement that the plea agreement included the threats Brockbank made against the election officials — identified in evidence as Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state’s governor.

Griswold has been outspoken nationally on elections security and has received threats in the past over her insistence that the 2020 election was secure. Her office says she has gotten more frequent and more violent threats since September 2023, when a group of voters filed a lawsuit attempting to remove former President Donald Trump from Colorado’s primary ballot.

“I refuse to be intimidated and will continue to make sure every eligible Republican, Democrat, and Unaffiliated voter can make their voices heard in our elections,” Griswold said in a statement issued after Brockbank’s plea.

Investigators say Brockbank began to express the view that violence against public officials was necessary in late 2021. According to a detention motion, Brockbank told investigators after his arrest that he’s not a “vigilante” and hoped his posts would simply “wake people up.” He has been jailed since his Aug. 23 arrest in Cortez, Colorado.

Brockbank criticized the government’s response to Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted this year for allowing a breach of her election system inspired by false claims about election fraud in the 2020 presidential race, according to court documents. He also was upset in December 2023 after a divided Colorado Supreme Court removed Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

In one social media post in August 2022, referring to Griswold and Hobbs, Brockbank said: “Once those people start getting put to death then the rest will melt like snowflakes and turn on each other,” according to copies of the threats included in court documents. In September 2021, Brockbank said Griswold needed to “hang by the neck till she is Dead Dead Dead,” saying he and other “every day people” needed to hold her and others accountable, prosecutors said.

Brockbank also posted in October 2021 that he could use his rifle to “put a bullet” in the head of a state judge who had overseen Brockbank’s probation for his fourth conviction for driving under the influence, under the plea agreement, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors say Brockbank also acknowledged posting in July 2022 that he would shoot without warning any federal agent who showed up at his house. Prosecutors earlier said in court documents that a half dozen firearms were found in his home after his arrest, including a loaded one near his front door, even though he can’t legally possess firearms due to a felony conviction of attempted theft by receiving stolen property in Utah in 2002.

The investigation was launched in August 2022 after Griswold’s office notified federal authorities of posts made on Gab and Rumble, an alternative video-sharing platform that has been criticized for allowing and sometimes promoting far-right extremism, according to court documents.

And although Brockbank only pled guilty for threats made between September 2021 and August 2022, prosecutors say he’s made more since then.

In December 2023, after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump should not appear on the state’s primary ballot, Brockbank allegedly told his stepfather in a text that he was adding the four judges who backed removing Trump to “my list.” The U.S. Supreme Court later restored Trump to the ballot.

And this July, prosecutors say, Brockbank continued to threaten Griswold because her office triggered the investigation of Peters by notifying authorities about the data breach in 2021.

Peters was sentenced to nearly nine years behind bars this month for allowing access to the county’s election system to a man affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell — a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election. Authorities investigated separate threats made against her trial judge, Matthew Barrett. Most of the messages appear to have been strongly worded opinions but none appeared to rise to the level of a crime, Mesa County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Wendy Likes said Tuesday.

In 2022, a Nebraska man pleaded guilty to making death threats against Griswold in what officials said was the first such plea obtained by the Election Threats Task Force.

The Justice Department task force’s longest sentences so far — 3.5 years in prison — were handed down in separate cases involving election officials in Arizona. In one case, a man who advocated for “a mass shooting of poll workers,” posted threatening statements in November 2022 about two Maricopa County officials and their children, prosecutors said.

In the other, a Massachusetts man pleaded guilty to sending a bomb threat in February 2021 to an election official in the Arizona Secretary of State’s office.

Another man was sentenced on Monday to 30 months in prison for sending threatening messages to an Maricopa County Elections Instagram account.

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Associated Press