Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former President Barack Obama maintained a tumultuous and often testy relationship over the administration's handling of the last financial crisis, according to a new report in Politico magazine.

In her capacity as a presidential candidate, Warren describes the Obama administration as a crucial partner in her successful bid to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Politico paints a behind-the-scenes picture of Warren and her hard-hitting style as being a thorn in the side of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economic Council chief Larry Summers, and Obama.

At times, tensions ran so high that Obama administration aides routinely referred to Warren as a "professional critic," "sanctimonious," and a "condescending narcissist," Politico reported.

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While she speaks positively of him on the campaign trail now, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former President Barack Obama maintained a tumultuous and often testy relationship over the administration's handling of the last financial crisis, according to a lengthy new report in Politico magazine.

In her capacity as a presidential candidate, Warren describes the Obama administration as a crucial partner in her successful bid to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a government watchdog agency housed within the Treasury Department which seeks to protect consumers from predatory lenders and debt collectors, among other things.

But Politico paints a behind-the-scenes picture of Warren and her hard-hitting style as being a thorn in the side of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economic Council chief Larry Summers, Obama's top aides, and Obama himself over Warren's sharp and vocal criticisms of the administration's economic policies.

At times, tensions ran so high that Obama administration aides routinely referred to Warren as a "professional critic," "sanctimonious," and a "condescending narcissist," at the time Politico reported, quoting another Treasury Department aide describing Warren as "pissing in the face" of Obama's administration.

To this day, some former Obama staffers describe Warren as "a self-serving grandstander who cast them as villains while they were trying to save the global economy from catastrophe," Politico's Alex Thompson wrote.

Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor and one of the nation's leading experts on bankruptcy and consumer protection law, first built a public profile testifying before Congress and getting involved in policymaking.

The Massachusetts Senator gained a reputation for her laser-focused grilling of Senators and administration officials, including Geithner, during Senate hearings.

One of the Senators she frequently sparred with in those hearings was former Vice President Joe Biden, at the time a Senator from Delaware and now one of Warren's main rivals in the 2020 Democratic primary field.

The Politico story describes how Warren, who comes from a working-class background herself, was inherently suspicious of figures like Geithner and Summers, who she viewed as too cozy with Wall Street and the corporate establishment.

Read more: Democratic primary voters expect Elizabeth Warren to crush the third 2020 Democratic debate, while expectations of Joe Biden have taken a sharp downturn

"I believe the recovery should have been from the ground up, and people with Geithner's and Summers' background would never see the world that way -- they just don't see it that way," Warren told Politico of the administration's policy surrounding recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.

One of the first major points of conflicts between Obama and Warren was leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she lobbied to create as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank banking reform bill and lists as one of her "children" in her Twitter bio.

While Warren wanted to lead the Bureau, Obama and his advisers worried that she was too outspoken and controversial to get confirmed by the Senate for the role, and ended up appointing her a "special adviser" within the Treasury Department with significant authority over the CFPB.

Later, the Obama administration found a way to get Warren out of the Treasury Department by drafting her to run for US Senate against then-GOP Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts — who she defeated — and nominating Richard Cordray to lead the CFPB.

Former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, one of the architects of the Dodd-Frank legislation, recalled saying of Warren to Obama, "I think she wants your job but she's got to start somewhere."