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WENTY YEARS AGO as Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith was heading into her first election, she confronted allegations that would have crippled many a candidate: She had burst into the Internal Affairs office in the middle of an investigation implicating her and seized a cassette tape containing a key interview.

In the early 90s, Laurie Smith was one of three assistant sheriffs and a potential heir apparent to Sheriff Chuck Gillingham (left). Gary Brady (right) was a rising star working on a drug enforcement task force that Smith oversaw.

At the time, none of the principal players would talk, even after a memo written by the office secretary about Smith’s unorthodox interference was leaked to the press. With the skill that has helped her weather a series of recent jail scandals, Smith was able to douse the potentially explosive episode.

Now, as she heads into an unprecedented sixth election for the job of top cop, the 25-year-old allegation is once again haunting her — and this time, the key players have stepped forward, revealing a sordid saga that raises new questions about the sheriff’s judgment and management style.

Gary Brady, the retired sergeant whose complaints implicating Smith led to two Internal Affairs investigations, is for the first time going public with his claims that Smith sexually harassed him. No findings of wrongdoing ever emerged from the investigations, but two people have come forward to support key parts of Brady’s account — Ron Clark, the retired Internal Affairs sergeant who investigated one of the complaints, and Pat Verzosa, the civilian secretary who wrote the memo about the then-assistant sheriff’s demand that she hand over the tape of Brady’s interview.

“It’s easier to stand silent, but what Laurie did wasn’t right,’’ Verzosa, who retired from the sheriff’s office five years ago, told this news organization in an interview at her San Jose home. “It was just awful to me that it happened.’’

The story they tell carries particular resonance in the #MeToo era since it ultimately involves salacious allegations by Brady, who first complained to investigators that Smith yanked him off a plum assignment because of his gender. Later he sketched a more troubling picture, saying he believed she wanted to get even with him for cutting short a sexual encounter she initiated in an unmarked police car, at a time when she was his supervisor.