The state Republican Party has filed a federal lawsuit against the unknown person who officials say tapped its Twitter account and wrote the controversial tweet “We did it. #Never Trump” at the culmination of its state assembly in Colorado Springs.

The tweet — which came two minutes after the party’s chairman, Steve House, announced April 9 that all of Colorado’s 34 delegates would go to Trump’s challenger, Ted Cruz — fed a national conspiracy theory and triggered threats against party leaders.

The lawsuit, filed Monday, seeks unspecified monetary damages against John Doe, the yet-unidentified perpetrator who either used the Colorado Republican Committee’s computer without authorization or hacked into the committee’s Twitter account.

Party spokesman Kyle Kohli on Tuesday said the lawsuit was intended to send a public message and clarify that the party didn’t publish the tweet.

Also, House said the lawsuit is “the best way to compel Twitter to respond to us with the app information to find out who did it.”

“Ultimately, someone has to be held responsible for a tweet that we didn’t do,” House said in an interview Tuesday. “I think anytime someone uses your account in an unauthorized way, you’ve got to figure out who it is, you’ve got to stop it, you have to make sure they are held accountable for it.

“I think there are people from multiple presidential campaigns that want to know what the truth was and what happened. But I specifically want to make sure that we tell the public what happened, who used it, how they did it and that it’s never going to happen again.”

Before filing the lawsuit, the party looked at who had access to the account and offered amnesty to staffers and vendors in the hopes that the culprit would come forward, House said.

CRC attorney Christopher Murray of Denver said he will seek to force Twitter to reveal the identity of the tweet forger.

“First, we need to find who did this, and this is the first step in doing that,” said Murray, referring to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says that only House and Kohli had access to the account, and neither of them wrote the post.

A day after the state assembly, Trump accused the CRC of political shenanigans: “The people of Colorado had their vote taken away from them by the phony politicians. Biggest story in politics. This will not be allowed!” Trump posted on Twitter on April 10.

House made the delegate announcement at 8:05 p.m. The alleged phony tweet appeared at 8:07 p.m., and Kohli deleted the “unauthorized” tweet by 8:11 p.m. Unfortunately, the tweet had been retweeted multiple times, the lawsuit says.

“This tweet was not authorized by the CRC,” the lawsuit says.

The party conducted a three-week investigation into the origin of the post and determined that the “fraudulent tweet was sent using the Twitter for iPhone app but was not able to determine the identity of the responsible individual,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit adds: ” Twitter was largely uncooperative,” refusing to provide the internet protocol address and mobile service provider of the device used to issue the tweet.

Throughout the investigation, state Republican officers received anonymous death threats and the tweet damaged their reputations, the lawsuit says.

“The threats received by the CRC constituted a threat to public health or safety,” the lawsuit says.

On April 19, the lawsuit says, the CRC sent e-mails to everyone who at one point had access to the @cologop account asking that they identify themselves, but the group received no response.

Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, kmitchell@denverpost.com or @kirkmitchell or denverpost.com/coldcases