The Colorado Republican Party sued six prominent state Republicans this week alleging the group orchestrated a failed “coup” that attempted to remove state GOP Chairman Dave Williams and his fellow state party officers from their positions last summer, costing the party substantial legal fees and diverting resources from campaigns just weeks before the November election.

In a lawsuit filed on Monday in El Paso County District Court, the state GOP, Williams and the party’s vice chair and secretary ask the court to find that the Republicans who instigated and carried out a plan that claimed to have replaced Williams and the other officers are liable for unspecified damages to be determined at trial.

The 43-page complaint names as defendants former state and county party officials Eli Bremer, Todd Watkins, Nancy Pallozzi, Kevin McCarney, Brita Horn and Kristi Burton Brown, who chaired the state party before Williams’ election to the top spot in March 2023.

In their lawsuit, Williams and the other plaintiffs allege that the rival group of Republicans engaged in “a series of unethical, dishonorable, and fraudulent actions designed to cling to power.” The lawsuit also details an alleged scheme to return the state party’s former attorney, Chris Murray, to his lucrative position.

Several of the defendants declined to comment on Friday, telling Colorado Politics that they hadn’t been served with the lawsuit.

Horn, who recently announced her bid for state GOP chair in next month’s party reorganization, said that she hadn’t yet been served either but issued a statement criticizing Williams and RINO Watch, an anonymous website that posted the lawsuit online Friday morning.

“Either RINO Watch has made a libelous claim or Dave Williams has put the cart before the horse in using his shadow outlet to report yet another of his frivolous attacks on his political opponents,” Horn said.

Charging that Williams had “taken a page from the Democrats’ playbook weaponizing the legal system,” Horn added: “Either way, this will not deter me from my goal of uniting the Colorado Republican Party and moving the party past using the organization to attack fellow members.”

Williams, who hasn’t said whether he plans to seek a second term as party chair, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The state party said in its filing that it spent at least $100,000 in legal fees defending against the group’s actions, some of which it notes were found to be in violation of party bylaws by a district court judge last fall.

Before that ruling, the Colorado GOP’s warring factions — described as the “old leadership” and the “new leadership” in the party’s lawsuit — spent months taking each other to court multiple times and holding a series of competing meetings that at one point left the party with two sets of officers occupying two different headquarters for about a month, with each claiming to be the authorized representatives of the state Republican Party.

Pallozzi, a former Jefferson County chair, and Watkins, a former El Paso County vice chair, organized meetings attended by members of the state GOP’s central committee, including one held in late August that was condemned by Williams as an unauthorized and “illegal” gathering.

At that meeting, held at a church in Brighton and presided over briefly by Burton Brown, the Republicans in attendance voted to oust Williams, state Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman and Secretary Anna Ferguson, and then elected Bremer as the state party’s chair, Horn as vice chair and McCarney as secretary.

About a month later, an El Paso County District Court judge ruled that Bremer and the others didn’t adhere to party bylaws when they removed the incumbents, effectively ending the challenge.

Williams, a controversial former state lawmaker from Colorado Springs, drew calls for his resignation as state chair starting in early 2024, when he declined to relinquish the party position after joining a contested primary in the 5th Congressional District for the seat held by retiring U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn.

Complaints from Republicans mounted last year after Williams and his staff distributed party emails and social media posts attacking the LGBTQ community’s Pride Month. They intensified over the summer after Williams lost the congressional primary by a wide margin to veteran political operative and former radio host Jeff Crank, despite Williams’ endorsement in the primary by Donald Trump.

The state party’s lawsuit argues that Williams’ critics sought to reverse the results of the 2023 party election, when Burton Brown, who declined to seek a second term running the party, handed the chairmanship to Williams, who campaigned as a voice of the GOP’s grassroots wing.

“The Defendants continued to flout the Bylaws and the legal process and charged ahead with their coup, causing chaos and public confusion within months of the 2024 presidential election,” the lawsuit states.

The state party and its officers requested a jury trial.