Colorado man arrested for threats against Trump opponents on right-wing websites

WASHINGTON — A Colorado man has been arrested by the FBI and charged with making threats against elections officials, a judge, and federal law enforcement agents.

Teak Brockbank, a 45-year-old from Cortze, Colorado, was arrested on Friday and charged with transmitting interstate threats and will make his first court appearance on Monday.

A redacted affidavit from an FBI special agent indicated that they had been investigating threats made on two right-wing social media websites — Rumble and Gab — and determined that Brockbank went by the username “Teakty4u” and made threats against numerous officials. Brockbank, federal prosecutors wrote, “also has a lengthy history of illegally possessing firearms,” and the FBI affidavit references slogans associated with the fringe QAnon movement. The names of Brockbank’s targets were sealed at the request of the government.

“As alleged, Teak Brockbank threatened the lives of multiple public servants 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 servants 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 people in Colorado and Arizona needed to be executed, authorities said. “The people have to take matters into their own hands,” he allegedly wrote in one Rumble post in July 2022.

“We are gonna have to take care of these people ourselves. Our law-enforcement are incompetent our judges are incompetent George Soros paid for funded puppets are running our state,” he allegedly wrote on Gab in July 2022. “It’s time for the American people to take matters into their own hands start eliminating those that we know are guilty!! There is no other way! Mark my words. We have to go to war with these people right now!!”

After identifying Brockbank through subpoenas, authorities determined he had access to weapons despite being banned from owning them because of a prior conviction for attempted theft by receipt of stolen property, according to the FBI affidavit. He was blocked from purchasing a gun in Aug. 2023 after failing a background check and was notified that his appeal had been denied in Sept. 2023, according to the FBI.

More recently, the FBI said, Brockbank had shown “continued interest in violence toward public officials as well as his ongoing and recent illegal possession of firearms.” They cited a message that he sent to his stepfather in Dec. 2023.

“Four judges in Colorado have removed President Trump from the ballot in Colorado. their names have been added to my list… their names have been moved to the front 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 did not show that Brockbank had an attorney.