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

Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, of Cortez, Colorado, has been jailed since his August 23 arrest. He is now due in court for a change of plea hearing after pleading not guilty to one count of interstate threats. His lawyer informed 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 he was not a “vigilante” and that he hoped his posts would “just wake people up.”

Investigators say Brockbank began expressing the opinion that violence against public officials was necessary in late 2021 and later made multiple threats against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Secretary of State of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, now governor of the state, and the others.

In an August 2022 article, referencing Griswold and Hobbs, Brockbank was quoted as saying, “Once these people start being put to death, 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 among those allegedly targeted by Brockbank during his first arrest, but were identified as victims in evidence unsealed in September.

The investigation was launched in August 2022 after Griswold’s office notified federal authorities about posts made on Gab and Rumble, an alternative video-sharing platform that has been criticized for enabling and sometimes encouraging extremism. far right, according to court documents.

Brockbank also reportedly 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 driving under the influence conviction, calling the judge a “Nazi,” according to prosecutors. said in an Aug. 27 motion requesting that Brockbank be kept behind bars during his prosecution.

Prosecutors also say Brockbank posted in July 2022 that he would shoot without warning any federal agent who showed up at his home. Prosecutors said a half-dozen guns were found in his home after his arrest in August, including a loaded one near his front door, even though he cannot legally possess firearms due to a conviction for attempted theft by receiving stolen property in Utah in 2002.

And although Brockbank was charged with threats allegedly made between September 2021 and August 2022, prosecutors say he has continued since then.

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

And last July, prosecutors say, Brockbank continued to threaten Griswold because his office triggered an investigation into former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters by informing authorities of a data breach on the equipment county election in 2021. Griswold has also been outspoken nationally about election security and has received threats in the past due to his emphasis on the security of the 2020 election.

Peters was sentenced to nearly nine years in prison in October for allowing access to the county’s election system to a man affiliated with My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines had been manipulated to steal the elections. Authorities investigated separate threats made against his trial judge, Matthew Barrett, who chastised Peters during his sentencing. Most of the messages appear to have been strongly worded, but none appear to constitute a crime, Mesa County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Wendy Likes said Tuesday.

Brockbank was prosecuted by the Justice Department’s Election Threat Task Force, announced by Attorney General Merrick Garland to protect workers who have faced 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.

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