Outgoing Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had apologized to him for the ethics proceedings against Burris in 2009.

Burris said that the Senate’s top Democrat had expressed regrets to him for the Senate Ethics Committee’s admonishment of Burris over the circumstances that led to his appointment to the Senate seat once held by President Obama.

“Harry has since expressed an apology to me,” Burris told the Chicago Sun-Times in an exit interview. “That’s why you saw me being treated as any other senator.”

Burris was officially reprimanded by the ethics panel in 2009 for his testimony before an Illinois state legislature investigation into the Senate appointment. While the committee found that Burris broke no laws, they admonished the senator for “providing incorrect, inconsistent, misleading, or incomplete information” in his testimony about former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s (D) alleged attempt to sell the Senate seat.

Reid’s office would neither confirm nor deny Burris’s claim of an apology.

“We don’t discuss the senator’s personal conversations,” said Reid spokeswoman Regan LaChapelle.

The Burris episode proved somewhat of a headache for Senate Democrats, who faced calls for Burris’s resignation. The Illinois Democrat hung onto his job, though, and will leave the chamber later this month, when Sen.-elect Mark Kirk (R) is sworn in.