S.&P.’s Account of an Irate Treasury Secretary

Government officials made no secret of their displeasure when Standard & Poor’s downgraded the debt of the United States in 2011.

But, according to Standard & Poor’s, that indignation led to more than harsh words. It also motivated the government’s lawsuit last year that accused S.& P. of fraud, the ratings agency claims.

Now, S.&P. is using an account of a conversation between Timothy F. Geithner, the former Treasury secretary, and Harold W. McGraw III, the chairman of S.&P.’s parent company, to bolster its defense.

In a telephone call in August 2011, days after the downgrade was announced, an angry Mr. Geithner told Mr. McGraw that S.&P. had made an error in its assessment and that “you are accountable for that,” according to an affidavit by Mr. McGraw that was filed on Monday in United States District Court for the Central District of California.

“You have done an enormous disservice to yourselves and to your country,” Mr. Geithner said, according to Mr. McGraw. The conduct of S.&P. would be “looked at very carefully.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Geithner, Jenni LeCompte, said in an email: “The allegation that former Secretary Geithner threatened or took any action to prompt retaliatory government action against S.&P. is false.”

At the time of the downgrade â€" which represented the first time any major credit rating agency had removed the United States government from its list of risk-free borrowers â€" the Treasury Department issued a harsh critique of the methodology used by S.&P., saying its math was wrong.

That war of words resurfaced in 2013, when S.&P. was trying to fend off the Justice Department’s first â€" and, to date, only â€" significant action against the credit rating industry. The department claimed in its suit that S.&P. inflated the ratings of mortgage investments, setting them up for a crash when the financial crisis struck.

After trying unsuccessfully to get the lawsuit dismissed, S.&P. claimed in September that the legal action amounted to “retaliation” for the government downgrade, a claim the government denied.