He also denied that he dry-fired a revolver outside the locked room.
"I opened the gun up. It is a revolver. And when you open it and turn it, it clicks. I wanted to make sure it was not loaded and it was not loaded," he said. "I'm assuming that was the sound she heard."
During the campaign Republican officials largely kept their distance from DesJarlais, declining to weigh in on the allegations. The congressman himself disappeared from the campaign trail, though he ran a barrage of television ads linking his Democratic opponent to President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
State Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey told reporters before the release of the transcripts Thursday that voters in the deeply conservative district may have chosen to bide their time until a Republican challenger emerges.
"There are some that voted thinking next time there'll be somebody else in the primary — we don't want Pelosi to be speaker, so one more time we'll vote for Scott," he said. "He'll have a primary opponent. I mean, he knows that."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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