Colorado man arrested in connection with threats against Trump opponents on right-wing websites

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

Teak Brockbank, 45, of Cortez, was arrested Friday and charged with transmitting interstate threats . He will make his first court appearance Monday.

An FBI special agent indicated in a redacted affidavit that investigators had been looking into 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 refers to slogans associated with the fringe QAnon movement. The names of Brockbank's alleged 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 is alleged to have written in a 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 is alleged to have written 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 they identified Brockbank through subpoenas, authorities determined he had access to weapons even though he banned from owning them because of a previous conviction for attempted theft by receipt of stolen property, according to the FBI affidavit. He was blocked from purchasing a gun in August 2023 after he failed a background check, and he was notified that his appeal had been denied in September, 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." It cited a message he sent to his stepfather in December.

“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 is alleged to have written 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.