A Colorado man repeatedly made online threats about killing the top elections officials in his state and Arizona — both Democrats — as well as a judge and law enforcement agents, according to a guilty plea he entered Wednesday.

Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, acknowledged to a federal judge in Denver that his comments were made “out of fear, hate and anger,” as he sat dressed in a khaki jail uniform before pleading guilty to one count of transmitting interstate threats. He faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced on Feb. 3.

Brockbank’s case is the 16th conviction secured by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which Attorney General Merrick Garland formed in 2021 to combat the rise of threats targeting the election community.
Earlier this year, French actor Judith Godrèche called on France’s film industry to “face the truth” on sexual violence and physical abuse during the Cesar Awards ceremony, France’s version of the Oscars. “We can decide that men accused of rape no longer rule the (French) cinema,” Godrèche said.

“As we approach Election Day, the Justice Department’s warning remains clear: anyone who illegally threatens an election worker, official, or volunteer will face the consequences,” Garland said in a statement.

Brockbank did not elaborate Wednesday on the threats he made, and court documents outlining the plea agreement were not immediately made public. His lawyer Thomas Ward declined to comment after the hearing.

However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado said in statement that the plea agreement included the threats Brockbank made against the election officials — identified in evidence as Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state’s governor.

Griswold has been outspoken nationally on elections security and has received threats in the past over her insistence that the 2020 election was secure. Her office says she has gotten more frequent and more violent threats since September 2023, when a group of voters filed a lawsuit attempting to remove former President Donald Trump from Colorado’s primary ballot.

“I refuse to be intimidated and will continue to make sure every eligible Republican, Democrat, and Unaffiliated voter can make their voices heard in our elections,” Griswold said in a statement issued after Brockbank’s plea.

Investigators say Brockbank began to express the view that violence against public officials was necessary in late 2021. According to a detention motion, Brockbank told investigators after his arrest that he’s not a “vigilante” and hoped his posts would simply “wake people up.” He has been jailed since his Aug. 23 arrest in Cortez, Colorado.

Brockbank criticized the government’s response to Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted this year for allowing a breach of her election system inspired by false claims about election fraud in the 2020 presidential race, according to court documents. He also was upset in December 2023 after a divided Colorado Supreme Court removed Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

In one social media post in August 2022, referring to Griswold and Hobbs, Brockbank said: “Once those people start getting put to death then the rest will melt like snowflakes and turn on each other,” according to copies of the threats included in court documents. In September 2021, Brockbank said Griswold needed to “hang by the neck till she is Dead Dead Dead,” saying he and other “every day people” needed to hold her and others accountable, prosecutors said.

Brockbank also 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 conviction for driving under the influence, under the plea agreement, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors say Brockbank also acknowledged posting in July 2022 that he would shoot without warning any federal agent who showed up at his house. Prosecutors earlier said in court documents that a half dozen firearms were found in his home after his arrest, including a loaded one near his front door, even though he can’t legally possess firearms due to a felony conviction of attempted theft by receiving stolen property in Utah in 2002.

Two controversial new rules passed by Georgia’s State Election Board concerning the certification of vote tallies are set to face their first test in court this week.

The Republican majority on the State Election Board — made up of three members praised by former President Donald Trump praised by name at a recent rally — voted to approve the rules last month. Democrats filed a legal challenge and argue the rules could be used “to upend the statutorily required process for certifying election results in Georgia.”

A bench trial, meaning there is a judge but no jury, is set to begin Tuesday before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.

One of the rules provides a definition of certification that includes requiring county officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results, but it does not specify what that means. The other includes language allowing county election officials “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.”

A series of recent appointments means Trump-endorsed Republicans have had a 3-2 majority on the State Election Board since May. That majority has passed several new rules over the past two months that have caused worry among Democrats and others who believe Trump and his allies may use them to cause confusion and cast doubt on the results if he loses this crucial swing state to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election.

Another rule the board passed more recently requires that poll workers count the number of paper ballots — not votes — by hand on election night after voting ends. A separate lawsuit filed by a group headed by a former Republican lawmaker initially challenged the two certification rules but was amended last week to also challenge the ballot counting rule and some others that the board passed.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and an association of county election officials had cautioned the state board against passing new rules so close to the election. They argued it could cause confusion among poll workers and voters and undermine public trust in the voting process.

The challenge to the certification rules filed by Democratic groups and others asks the judge to confirm that election superintendents — a multi-person election board in most counties — have a duty to certify an election by the deadline provided in the law and have no discretion to withhold or delay certification. They ask that it should be declared invalid if the judge believes either of the rules allows such discretion.

Lawyers for the State Election Board argue the Democrats are asking the judge to “declare what is already enshrined in Georgia law,” that county certification is mandatory and must occur by 5 p.m. the Monday after the election, or the next day if Monday is a holiday, as it is this year. They also argue the challenge is barred by the principle of sovereign immunity and seeks relief that isn’t appropriate under the law.

The challenge was filed by the state and national Democratic parties, as well as county election board members from counties in metro Atlanta, most chosen by the local Democratic Party, as well voters who support Democrats and two Democratic state lawmakers running for reelection. It was filed against the State Election Board, and the state and national Republican parties joined the fight on the board’s side.

The Democrats concede in their challenge that the two rules “could be read not to conflict with Georgia statutes” but they argue “that is not what the drafters of those rules intended.”

“According to their drafters, these rules rest on the assumption that certification of election results by a county board is discretionary and subject to free-ranging inquiry that may delay certification or render it wholly optional,” they wrote in a court filing.

They also note that numerous county election officials around the state have already sought to block or delay certification in recent elections and “the new rules hand those officials new tools to do so again in November.”

State lawyers argue that since the argument against the rules is based on the alleged intent of the people who presented them or the way some officials could interpret them, rather than on the text of the rules themselves, the challenge should be thrown out.

Algeria’s constitutional court on Saturday certified the landslide victory of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in last weekend’s election after retabulating vote counts that he and his two opponents had called into question.

The court said that it had reviewed local voting data to settle questions about irregularities that Tebboune’s opponents had alleged in two appeals on Monday.

“After verification of the minutes of the regions and correction of the errors noted in the counting of the votes,” it had lowered Tebboune’s vote share and determined that his two opponents had won hundreds of thousands more votes than previously reported, said Omar Belhadj, the constitutional court’s president.

The court’s decision makes Tebboune the official winner of the Sept. 7 election. His government will next decide when to inaugurate him for a second term.

The court’s retabulated figures showed Tebboune leading Islamist challenger Abdellali Hassan Cherif by around 75 percentage points. With 7.7 million votes, the first-term president won 84.3% of the vote, surpassing 2019 win by millions of votes and a double-digit margin.

Cherif, running with the Movement of Society for Peace, won nearly 950,000 votes, or roughly 9.6%. The Socialist Forces Front’s Youcef Aouchiche won more than 580,000 votes, or roughly 6.1%.

Notably, both challengers surpassed the threshold required to receive reimbursement for campaign expenses. Under its election laws, Algeria pays for political campaigns that receive more than a 5% vote share. The results announced by the election authority last week showed Cherif and Aouchiche with 3.2% and 2.2% of the vote, respectively. Both were criticized for participating in an election that government critics denounced as a way for Algeria’s political elite to make a show of democracy amid broader political repression.

Throughout the campaign, each of the three campaigns emphasized participation, calling on voters and youth to participate and defy calls to boycott the ballot. The court announced nationwide turnout was 46.1%, surpassing the 2019 presidential election when 39.9% of the electorate participated.

Social media platform X said Saturday it will close its operations in Brazil, claiming Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes threatened to arrest its legal representative in Brazil if they did not comply with orders.

X is removing all remaining Brazil staff in the country “effective immediately,” though the company said service will still be available to the people of Brazil. The company did not clarify how it could claim to suspend operations while continuing to provide services to Brazilians.

Earlier this year, the company clashed with de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation on X. The company said his most recent orders amounted to censorship, and shared a copy of the document on X.

The Supreme Court’s press office didn’t immediately respond to Associated Press email requests seeking comment, or to confirm the veracity of the document, on Saturday.

In the United States, free speech is a constitutional right that’s much more permissive than in many countries, including Brazil, where de Moraes in April ordered an investigation into CEO Elon Musk over the dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization.

Brazil’s political right has long characterized de Moraes as overstepping his bounds to clamp down on free speech and engage in political persecution.

Whether investigating former President Jair Bolsonaro, banishing his far-right allies from social media, or ordering the arrest of supporters who stormed government buildings on Jan. 8, 2023, de Moraes has aggressively pursued those he views as undermining Brazil’s young democracy.

“Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process,” the company said in a statement on X.

In a tweet Saturday morning, the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” and owner of X, Musk, said de Moraes “is an utter disgrace to justice.”