
Man who says far-right content led him to threaten election officials is sentenced to 3 years
U.S. District Judge S. Kato Crews said the penalty for such 'keyboard terrorism' needed to be serious enough to deter others, particularly because threats against public officials are on the rise. People need to work out differences through the democratic process, not violence, Crews said.
'The public must not accept this as the norm,' he said in handing down the sentence for Teak Ty Brockbank.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Brockbank, 45, pleaded guilty in October to making threats between September 2021 and August 2022 against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is now governor. He also threatened a Colorado judge overseeing his DUI case and threatened to kill any federal agents who came to his house.
In a statement, Griswold said conspiracy theories spread by the far right have incited threats and violence against election officials.
'I will not be intimidated,' she said.
Brockbank, dressed in a khaki jail uniform, apologized for his 'ugly posts' and said he has turned away from the fear, hate and anger he found online. He asked Crews to sentence him to home detention instead of more time behind bars.
Federal prosecutors sought three years in prison for Brockbank, the maximum recommended under sentencing guidelines. He asked for leniency, saying he made the posts when he was drinking heavily, socially isolated and spending his evenings consuming conspiracy theories online. Jonathan Jacobson, a Washington-based attorney for the Justice Department, pointed out that the threats continued during a period when Brockbank wasn't drinking.
Brockbank's attorney referred to his client — who has been in jail since he was arrested in August — as a 'keyboard warrior,' pointing out there was no evidence that he planned to carry out the threats. Brockbank spent time on social media sites such as Gab and Rumble, the alternative video-sharing platform that has been criticized for allowing and promoting far-right extremism.
The sites delivered 'the message that the country was under attack and that patriotic Americans had a duty to rise up and act,' attorney Tom Ward said in a court filing. He told Crews that Brockbank was drawn to QAnon conspiracy theories and that he regularly consumed online content from Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Ward noted that the Trump administration's Justice Department was seeking a tough sentence for someone who was influenced by some of the same extremist content that motivated people to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6 and were later pardoned by Trump.
But Crews, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, dismissed that as argument, saying the Jan. 6 pardons were granted by a different branch of the government based on separate interests.
Before announcing the sentence, Crews read some of Brockbank's threats, including descriptions of how officials should be killed, starting with one in which Brockbank said Griswold should 'hang by the neck.'
Crews said he believed Brockbank's remorse was genuine and urged him to follow through with his decision to turn away from hate even though he was going to prison.
Brockbank was prosecuted by a task force started under the Biden administration in 2021 to combat the rise of threats targeting election officials.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the task force was still operating.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
The unit has been led by the Justice Department's public integrity section in Washington, which has dwindled from more than two dozen lawyers to just a handful as the Trump administration has shifted resources to priorities like immigration and other matters.
___
Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.
Read more on the U.S. Election at thestar.com
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Toronto Star
4 minutes ago
- Toronto Star
No one killed in the Lake Tahoe boat capsizing wore a life vest, investigators say
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) — None of the eight people killed when a boat capsized during a sudden and fierce storm last month on Lake Tahoe in California were wearing life vests, federal investigators said in an initial report released Wednesday. Four members of a family who were celebrating a birthday were among those who died when the 28-foot (8.5-meter) gold Chris-Craft vessel was inundated and flipped over amid 10-foot (3-meter) waves June 21 on the lake's western edge.


Toronto Star
4 minutes ago
- Toronto Star
Bondi facing Democratic calls to testify following report she told Trump she was in Epstein files
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing Democratic calls to testify before Congress following a newspaper's revelation that she told President Donald Trump that his name appeared in the files of the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking investigation. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Bondi told Trump his name was among many high-profile figures mentioned in the files, which the Justice Department this month said it would not be releasing despite a clamor from online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and members of Trump's base.


Winnipeg Free Press
4 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Bondi facing Democratic calls to testify following report she told Trump she was in Epstein files
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing Democratic calls to testify before Congress following a newspaper's revelation that she told President Donald Trump that his name appeared in the files of the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking investigation. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Bondi told Trump his name was among many high-profile figures mentioned in the files, which the Justice Department this month said it would not be releasing despite a clamor from online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and members of Trump's base. Trump's personal ties to Epstein are well-established and his name is already known to have been included in records related to the wealthy financier, who killed himself in jail in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, responded to the report by calling on Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 'We need to bring Bondi and Patel into the Judiciary Committee to testify about this now,' Schiff said in a video posted on X. The Justice Department declined to comment on the report but issued a joint statement from Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche saying that investigators had reviewed the records and 'nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution.' 'As par of our routine briefing, we made the president aware of the findings,' the statement said. The mere inclusion of a person's name in Epstein's files does not imply wrongdoing and he was known to have been associated with multiple prominent figures, including Trump. Over the years, thousands of pages of records have been released through lawsuits, Epstein's criminal dockets, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests. They include a 2016 deposition in which an accuser recounted she spent several hours with Epstein at Trump's Atlantic City casino but didn't say if she met Trump and did not accuse him of any wrongdoing. Trump has also said he once thought Epstein was a 'terrific guy' but they later had a falling-out. White House spokesman Steven Cheung on Wednesday said the reports were 'nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.'