SEATTLE (AP) - A clearly miffed Dino Rossi began the final week of his campaign for governor in his lawyer's office Wednesday, answering questions under oath for a lawsuit brought by supporters of his Democratic opponent, Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Rossi once again denied allegations that he illegally helped coordinate the political fundraising of the Building Industry Association of Washington, his biggest third-party supporter. The conservative trade group is the named defendant in the underlying lawsuit.

A transcript of Rossi's deposition was replete with tense exchanges between Rossi and the attorneys who were questioning him, Mike Withey and Knoll Lowney.

A King County Superior Court judge said Monday that the public interest demanded Rossi answer questions before Election Day about the lawsuit. The case was brought by two former Supreme Court justices, Faith Ireland and Robert Utter, both of whom have donated money to Gregoire.

According to the transcript, Rossi and his lawyer called the questioning a "sham" and a "charade." Asked whether he had discussed the deposition with anyone besides his lawyers, Rossi said, "Talked to my wife about it last night that we're going into a political charade."

At one point Rossi's lawyer, Mike Patterson, accused Withey of trying to stare him down, and Withey threatened to call the judge over what he called "obstructive" tactics by Patterson, who repeatedly objected to the questions.

"You don't need to stare at me in disdain," Patterson said to Withey. "We've already got a bad name, lawyers do, and lawsuits like this, and your conduct during this deposition ... it doesn't do anything with regard to the decorum of our profession."

Withey denied he was staring at Patterson.

"This has been the most obstructive deposition I've ever participated in," Withey said, noting his 36 years as a lawyer. "It's made a mockery of the four hours that we've arranged for. We're going to move the court to impose sanctions on Mr. Patterson."

"I probably participated in more depositions than you ever thought of participating in and I've certainly tried more cases than you ever have, OK?" Patterson responded. "I'm not here to see lawyers that are being paid by Christine Gregoire use this (as a) political campaign and to ask questions that are geared to the press."

Withey and his co-counsel Lowney are Democratic lawyers, but are working on a contingency basis, meaning they won't get paid unless there is a fine awarded in the case.

There are clear connections, however, between the lawsuit and Gregoire's political allies.

Fuse Washington, a nonprofit group acting as press agent for the plaintiffs, recently received a $35,000 political action committee donation from Evergreen Progress, the major pro-Gregoire independent spending group.

Evergreen Progress, in turn, is headed by a Gregoire donor, Rick Desimone, and bankrolled mostly by the national Democratic Governors Association and labor unions. The group has spent more than $6 million to support Gregoire and oppose Rossi.

Withey and Lowney tried to home in on whether Rossi helped coordinate a political fundraising drive by the BIAW last year. If so, they argue, BIAW should be constrained by state limits on direct campaign contributions - $3,200 per election cycle - rather than the more than $6 million it has spent so far to back Rossi with independent expenditures.

Their claim centers on calls Rossi made to officers of a BIAW affiliate group, the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties, in spring 2007, at a time when that group was balking at contributing to the BIAW's war chest.

Rossi said that when he made the calls, he couldn't have been coordinating campaign fundraising because he was still months away from deciding whether to run again, after his 133-vote loss to Gregoire four years ago in the closest gubernatorial election in U.S. history.

The BIAW also says it did nothing wrong.

Withey and Lowney argue that Rossi became a candidate when he consented to the BIAW raising money on his behalf, but Rossi says he never gave such consent. Withey and Lowney point out that in June 2007, Rossi was the guest speaker at a BIAW board of directors meeting where the organization's president announced how much money had been raised for the governor's race - and that recent polling showed Gregoire leading Rossi 47 percent to 43 percent.

After the deposition, both sides declared victory.

"It's just a sad day when we sit through four hours of deposition time, which is a total waste of time and just committed and confirmed that Dino Rossi did nothing inappropriate or illegal," Patterson said.

But Lowney countered: "We now know and we have it confirmed that the key meetings that are at the heart of this case did discuss financial issues and did discuss fundraising for political campaigns."