SAN FRANCISCO—Kleiner Perkins lawyer Lynne Hermle began her cross-examination of reddit interim CEO and former Kleiner Perkins junior partner Ellen Pao today in a high-profile gender discrimination case that Pao filed against the Silicon Valley venture capital firm in 2012. Pao has maintained that Kleiner Perkins failed to take action when a colleague of hers began harassing her and failed to promote her, while promoting less-qualified men.

Hermle’s goal today was to poke holes in Pao’s claims. Armed with a deposition that Pao had given prior to the trial, Hermle asked Pao about specific claims she had made and then played video clips from Pao’s deposition where she offered contrary answers.

The most notable occurred at the outset of the cross-examination when Hermle asked if Pao had, when she applied for the job at Kleiner Perkins, intended to move into an operating role after her experience there. Pao asserted in her testimony two days earlier that she had intended to become an investor from the outset, and that her plans were dashed by discrimination from Kleiner.

But when Hermle asked Pao if her goal had been to move into an operating role—usually taken to mean c-suite positions like CEO, COO, and so forth—Pao, taking long pauses before each response, said she wasn’t sure. Hermle then asked to play a video from a deposition taken prior to the trial. In the video, Pao affirmed that she did have interest in moving into a “key operating role,” and that she did not have any intention to work in venture capital long-term.

The conflicting testimony could bolster Kleiner's argument that Pao was not promoted because she didn't have the experience or the drive to be an investor.

Tension filled the packed courtroom as Hermle asked Pao to read the job description that Pao had received when she first was hired at Kleiner Perkins, including a request that the candidate be “humble.”

”You understand what humble means don’t you Ms. Pao?” Hermle asked pointedly. The defense has argued that Pao often thought herself better than her peers, and that Pao did not have the required experience to be promoted over her male colleagues.

“Mixed messages”

As Hermle presented pages and pages of correspondence between Pao and her Kleiner Perkins colleagues, the firm’s lawyer tried to show that Pao was not only inconsistent with the messages she sent her coworkers, but also unnecessarily dismissive and harsh with them.

According to Pao’s testimony, the first time Ajit Nazre—the coworker she has said harassed her—made an inappropriate advance towards her was when the two of them were on a business trip in Germany in 2006. As the two were crossing the street, Pao says, she was hit by a cab. Then, Pao moved to a bench and Nazre put his arm around her.

“You didn’t say no?” Hermle asked, incredulously.

“No I had just been hit by a cab… I was in a daze” Pao answered, moments later clarifying that Nazre had crossed in front of her and as she followed him the light changed and the cab hit her.

“You’re not trying to blame him for this?” Hermle asked.

“Not this part,” Pao said with a smirk, to some chuckles in the audience.

Hermle pulled up some e-mails between Pao and Nazre over the course of their relationship, which Pao has testified was brief. In many of the e-mails, Pao wrote flattering things to Nazre. “Your thought process is so clean and so quick...it just amazes me,” she wrote just after the Germany trip in which she testified Nazre made an unwelcome advance.

Hermle also tried to show that Pao was difficult to work with and launched similar complaints against many coworkers, not just Nazre. During their brief relationship, Pao wrote to Nazre about her problems with Trae Vassallo, a female colleague at the firm who, years later, also complained to Kleiner Perkins management about Ajit Nazre’s behavior. In 2006, Pao wrote to Nazre complaining that Trae was trying to be her “buddy.”

"I have so many buddies it will be a race to the bottom,” Pao wrote to Nazre in 2006.

Around the same time, Pao sent a few e-mails to senior managers complaining about Vassallo. Pao wrote that she “dumps work and does not give credit,” and that she “does not share information.”

”Do you recognize those as complaints similar to those you made about Mr. Nazre?” Hermle asked.

"Yes," Pao said.

In 2005, Pao also wrote to Ray Lane about her conflicts with Vassallo, saying "Trae needs to change her behavior. It’s Trae's turn to reach out to people around her, she had to work to dig herself out of this hole.”

Pao has also testified that she went and talked to Nazre's mentor Ray Lane in 2007 about his continued harassment, but that Lane responded to her by encouraging her to marry Nazre. Hermle brought up the e-mailed response from Lane, which read, in part, "I met my best friend and love of my life at work. In Texas, where my first wife and I filed for divorce, there was no legal separation. I started dating Stephanie three years after my ex and I were separated, but not officially divorced.”

Hermle asked Pao where, in that correspondence, Lane had encouraged her to marry Nazre. “I believe he was making an analogy between his relationship with his wife, and my relationship with Ajit,” Pao responded.

“Did you ever ask Mr. Lane about the analogy?”

Pao paused. “No I did not,” she replied.

Pao has also testified that Lane encouraged her to have lunch with Nazre to work out their differences, and that Nazre had followed Pao back to her car after an uncomfortable talk. Hermle suggested that Pao ought to have told Lane that she was uncomfortable eating lunch with Nazre.

“At this time you were capable of being perfectly direct with the people you worked with, right Ms. Pao?” Hermle asked.

“Depends on the topic but yes,” Pao answered.

Hermle then produced some e-mails from the day after Pao's lunch with Nazre, which indicated that the lunch had ended positively. "I did hear what you said yesterday and internalized it,” Pao wrote to Nazre the next day, adding "you know I would do anything to preserve our friendship, even though sometimes it’s harder than other times."

Kleiner Perkins also has said that Pao’s boss, John Doerr, took necessary steps to protect Pao from harassment. After Doerr learned of Nazre’s advances, he became angry, but Pao sent him an e-mail saying that she and Nazre had resolved their differences. Doerr sent Pao an e-mail saying he was relieved, writing, "I’m fiercely protective of the future and well being of KPCB, of my partners, and of you. …no partner should make KPCB uncomfortable for others. I posses a willful, purposeful resolve that at KPCB each partner can grow to be their best in every way.”

Hermle then asked Pao if Doerr specifically requested that Pao and Nazre not work together. "At least once, yes,” Pao answered, continuing, “I believe I said I though it would work.”

“Too promotional” or harboring “resentment”?

Pao has also testified that she revised a 2009 self review that she wrote because her boss, John Doerr, told her it was “too self-promotional.” Hermle produced a 2009 e-mail from Doerr that addressed Pao's self review, but never mentioned her being too self-promotional. Instead, Doerr wrote that he was worried that Pao was far too negative. “Ellen, In several places I sense resentment in your self-review," Doerr wrote. "I hope others don’t read it that way.”

”There’s nothing in here about being too self-promotional,” Hermle told the jury. Pao then clarified that Doerr made the “too self-promotional” comment verbally after another draft of her self-review.

Hermle then turned the jury’s attention to what Pao actually wrote in her self-review. “I fill in the slack when others drop the ball, which I feel [is] unpleasant and which others often resent," Pao wrote about her work.

"I continue to do more than 50% of the Chief of Staff role” Hermle read aloud from Pao's review, noting that at the time of the review Wen Hsieh, who was supposed to share Pao's duties as chief of staff, had been in China spending time with his mother who was dying of brain cancer.

"I frequently covered, often on short notice, for others on numerous projects, especially those which appeared to be time consuming,” Pao wrote in 2009, adding that despite the fact that Doerr had hired a paid speech writer, “... I still had to be called in to finish it [a series of his speeches] during my honeymoon. Interestingly, speech preparations have a funny way of taking place during holidays or vacations."

Hermle turned to Pao. "Do you think that [mentioning that] you had to be called in to finish this on your honeymoon appeared resentful Ms. Pao?”

“No, it was a fact,” Pao said.

Hermle also grilled Pao on the names of the three administrative assistants that Pao said had filed complaints of sexual harassment at Kleiner Perkins. Hermle identified one—an events planner with Kleiner Perkins who had made a complaint while working at the firm claiming that Arnold Schwarzenegger had “pinched her butt.” (Schwarzenegger is not affiliated with Kleiner Perkins). Pao was unable to recall the names of the other two administrative assistants besides one named “Tina,” but Pao could not remember her last name.

Money money money

Pao has also complained that after she complained to Kleiner senior staff about harassment and retaliation, Kleiner retaliated against her by putting off her official 2008 review. Her review was put off first just before her maternity leave, and then again put off in December so her bosses could attend a retirement party.

”But failing to get the review certainly didn’t hurt your compensation did it?” Hermle asked.

“No,” Pao responded, looking straight at Hermle.

“You got a salary increase of $40,000?” Hermle continued.

"I don’t remember,” Pao said.

“You also got a bonus of close to $150,000,” Hermle pressed. “And you listed this as evidence of retaliation in your complaint.”

“Not the bonus, but the lack of getting a review,” Pao maintained.

Pao has asked for $16 million in lost wages from Kleiner Perkins.