A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a Colorado man who threatened to kill Democratic election officials in Colorado and Arizona and blamed his actions on exposure to far-right political rhetoric to more than three years in prison, officials said.
The man, Teak Ty Brockbank, 46, pleaded guilty in October to one count of transmitting interstate threats, according to prosecutors. From September 2021 to July 2024, Mr. Brockbank, using two different social media accounts, posted a series of online threats against top election officials in Colorado and Arizona, a Colorado judge and federal agents, according to his plea agreement.
In his online threats, Mr. Brockbank said that a Colorado election official and “many others” should “hang by the neck till they are Dead Dead Dead,” and he called for the execution of an election official in Arizona.
Although they were unnamed in news releases about the case, The Associated Press reported that the two election officials targeted by Mr. Brockbank’s threats were the Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, and Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s former secretary of state who is now the state’s governor.
According to The A.P., Judge S. Kato Crews of U.S. District Court said in sentencing Mr. Brockbank to 37 months in prison that the penalty “needed to be serious enough to deter others, particularly because threats against public officials are on the rise.”
Tom Ward, a lawyer for Mr. Brockbank, said in a statement that his client was “ashamed” when looking back at his online posts and that he “takes full responsibility for his actions.” But he added that “it is important to remember that he was first a target of propaganda that relentlessly urged him to do exactly what he ended up doing.”
In a statement, Ms. Griswold said that “the far right has spread conspiracy theories to incite threats and violence against secretaries of state and election officials.”
“I will not be intimidated,” she said.
Through a spokesman, Ms. Hobbs declined to comment on the case.
In a sentencing motion filed by his lawyer, Mr. Brockbank asked the court for leniency. Mr. Brockbank was socially isolated and drinking heavily when he made the online threats, according to the motion. It added that he had begun “filling that void with increasing consumption of extremist political media, primarily through fringe platforms like Rumble and Gab.”
Heeding the inflammatory messages of Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime associate of President Trump’s, and Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, about an existential threat against the nation, Mr. Brockbank started “posting violent statements of his own while never leaving his home,” according to the motion.
According to the filing, “the digital personas he followed reinforced the idea that online speech was a battlefield and that he had a role to play.”
As the election in 2024 neared, law enforcement faced a growing wave of threats to election workers and political activists across the nation.
A survey of election workers released last year by the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan policy and legal institute in New York, found that almost 40 percent had been the target of threats or harassment. One in four expressed fear their family would be targeted — and a third of respondents said they knew someone who had given up their job to avoid the hassle and hazard.
Aimee Ortiz covers breaking news and other topics.
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