WASHINGTON — A Colorado man has been arrested by the FBI and charged with making threats against election officials, a judge and federal law enforcement officers.
Teak Brockbank, a 45-year-old man from Cortez, Colorado, was arrested Friday and charged with transmitting interstate threats and will make his first court appearance Monday.
A redacted affidavit from an FBI special agent said they investigated threats made on two far-right social media sites — Rumble and Gab — and determined that Brockbank used the username “Teakty4u” and had made threats against numerous government officials. Brockbank, federal prosecutors wrote, “also has a long history of illegal firearm possession,” and the FBI affidavit references slogans associated with the fringe QAnon movement. The names of Brockbank’s targets were sealed at the government’s request.
“As alleged, Teak Brockbank threatened to kill several public officials on social media. Among other threats, he allegedly claimed that it was ‘time’ to put two state election officials to death and that he was obligated to ‘put a bullet’ in the head of a Colorado state judge,” Nicole M. Argentieri, who heads the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement. “Public officials must be able to do their jobs without fear. The Criminal Division will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute those who target public officials with threats of violence.”
Brockbank wrote about his belief that Colorado and Arizona residents should be executed, authorities said. “People need to take matters into their own hands,” he reportedly wrote in a July 2022 Rumble article.
“We’re going to have to deal with these people ourselves. Our law enforcement is incompetent, our judges are incompetent. George Soros-funded puppets run our state,” he reportedly wrote on Gab in July 2022. “It’s time for the American people to take matters into their own hands and start taking down those we know are guilty! There’s no other way! Mark my words. We must wage war on these people now!”
After identifying Brockbank through subpoenas, authorities determined he had access to guns despite being prohibited from owning them due to a prior conviction for attempted theft by receiving stolen property, according to the FBI affidavit. He was barred from purchasing a gun in August 2023 after failing a background check and was informed his appeal had been denied in September 2023, according to the FBI.
More recently, the FBI said Brockbank had shown “a continued interest in violence against public officials as well as his ongoing and recent illegal possession of firearms.” They cited a message he sent to his father-in-law in December 2023.
“Four Colorado judges removed President Trump’s name from the ballot in Colorado. Their names were added to my list… Their names were moved to the top of my list,” Teak Brockbank allegedly wrote in the message cited by prosecutors. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that states could not remove Trump’s name from the ballot.
Court records do not indicate that Brockbank had an attorney.
