DENVER (AZFamily/AP) — A man repeatedly made online threats about killing the top elections officials in Arizona and his home state of Colorado — 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 Colorado 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.
The FBI said Teak Brockbank had photos of guns on his Apple iCloud.(FBI/Justice Department)
The former Cave Creek, Arizona resident faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced on Feb. 3.
According to court documents obtained by Arizona’s Family, the 45-year-old made posts on Rumble, a social media platform that operates like YouTube, and Gab, which is like X (formerly known as Twitter), where he threatened officials in both states from Sept. 2021 to August 2022, including then-Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
For example, investigators said on Oct. 2, 2021, he threatened a Colorado judge by saying he could “pick up my rifle and I could go put a bullet in this Mans head and send him to explain himself to our Creator right now. I would be Justified!!!”
The FBI said he posted a message on Aug. 4, 2022, saying once Arizona and Colorado election officials will “start getting put to death then the rest will melt like snowflakes and turn on each other. . . . This is the only way.”
Court papers said he also threatened federal law enforcement on July 20, 2022, by saying, “ATF CIA FBI show up to my house I am shooting them peace’s of (expletive) first No Warning!!”
Details outlining the plea agreement were not immediately made public. His lawyer Thomas Ward declined to comment after the hearing.
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.
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