A man accused of threatening to kill Democratic election officials will likely plead guilty

DENVER (AP) — A man accused of repeatedly threatening to kill the top elections officials in Colorado and Arizona as well as judges and federal law enforcement agents is expected to plead guilty in federal court on Wednesday.

Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, of Cortez, Colorado, has been jailed since his Aug. 23 arrest. Now he's scheduled to appear in court for a change of plea hearing after previously pleading not guilty to one count of making interstate threats. His lawyer notified the court that Brockbank wanted to change his plea. In federal court, “guilty” is the only other option.

According to a detention motion, Brockbank told investigators that he's not a “vigilante” and that he hoped his posts would simply “wake people up.”

Investigators say Brockbank began to express the view that violence against public officials was necessary in late 2021 and proceeded to make multiple threats against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state's governor, and the others.

In one post in August 2022, referring to Griswold and Hobbs, Brockbank allegedly 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. Griswold and Hobbs were not named as among those allegedly targeted by Brockbank when he was first arrested but were identified as victims in evidence unsealed in September.

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.

Brockbank also allegedly 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, calling the judge a “Nazi,” prosecutors said in an Aug. 27 motion asking that Brockbank be kept behind bars while prosecuted.

Prosecutors also say Brockbank posted in July 2022 that he would shoot any federal agent without warning who showed up at his house. Prosecutors said a half dozen firearms were found in his home after his August 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.

And although Brockbank was charged for threats allegedly made between September 2021 and August 2022, prosecutors say he's kept it up since then.

In December 2023, after a divided Colorado Supreme Court removed Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot, Brockbank allegedly told his stepfather in a text that he was adding the four judges in the majority to “my list.”

And this July, prosecutors say, Brockbank continued to threaten Griswold because her office triggered an investigation of former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters by notifying authorities about a data breach of the county's election equipment in 2021. Griswold also has been outspoken nationally on elections security and has received threats in the past over her insistence that the 2020 election was secure.

Peters was sentenced to nearly nine years behind bars in October 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, who admonished Peters during her sentencing. 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.

Brockbank was prosecuted by the Justice Department's Election Threats Task Force, announced by Attorney General Merrick Garland to protect workers who have been subject to increasing threats since the 2020 election.

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 task force.