Warren’s ‘MeToo’ flip-flopped old tale

‘Light-hearted’ encounter now harassment

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren reportedly switched up her account of sexual harassment that she relayed this weekend in a televised #MeToo testimonial from an earlier “light-hearted” version.

On Sunday, Warren described an unnamed senior professor’s unwanted approach with alarm on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying the man chased her around a desk while she said, “‘You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to do this. I have little children at home. Please don’t do this.’ ”

Warren added, “And at the same time, what was flickering through my brain is, ‘If he gets hold of me, I’m going to punch him right in the face.’ ”

Warren said she eventually escaped the office and only told her best friend what had happened. She said she wondered what she did to “bring this on” and “wore a lot of brown” after the encounter.

But the Boston Globe reported last night that Warren recounted the same incident in a “more light-hearted manner” at a memorial service after the professor’s death in 1997 — an account the Globe noted was “inconsistent” with her story on Sunday.

“During the service after his death in 1997, Warren spoke fondly of law professor Eugene Smith and told the gathered mourners she was laughing as Smith chased her around his desk, according to a colleague’s memoir,” the Globe reported.

The author of the memoir, John Mixon, told the paper, “I may have been wrong saying she was laughing,” adding that he was writing about the service 15 years after the fact.

The paper also noted that Warren failed to mention on “Meet The Press” that Smith had polio.

The Globe said Warren told the broadsheet yesterday she shared the story at the memorial service as a statement about Smith’s authority.

“It was 20 years later, and he didn’t have power over me any more,” Warren told the newspaper, which noted she was by then a Harvard law professor.

The Globe described the shift as an “evolution” on Warren’s part “amid changing attitudes about harassment and increasing empowerment of women to speak up.”

Warren has previously come under fire for having listed herself as a minority in a directory of law professors, based on her family lore of having Cherokee ancestry. Warren has never substantiated that claimand is not a member of any Indian tribes.

Critics say she used it to advance her career, noting that Harvard Law School once touted her as a minority professor.

AP FILE PHOTO METOO MEA CULPA? U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren previously spoke fondly of a law professor whom she recently said had tried to sexually harass her, chasing her around an office.