Barney Frank and Elizabeth Warren argue that Scott Brown would weaken Wall Street reform

By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff

Senator Scott Brown is intent on weakening Wall Street reform, Elizabeth Warren and Representative Barney Frank charged in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday morning.

Frank, a Newton Democrat, worked with Brown to pass the financial overhaul in 2010, but warned that tipping the Senate to Republicans — which a Brown reelection could help do — would mean the end of the law because the GOP wants to repeal it.

“The Republican Party today is very much in the grips of an extremely conservative group,” that will kill the Dodd-Frank law and the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau that Warren helped design, Frank said.

Warren pointed to a recent Boston Globe report about e-mails from Brown’s legislative director urging federal officials to give banks more leeway to invest in hedge funds and private equity funds.

She said the e-mails were evidence that Brown has been “negotiating in secret to weaken those reforms.”

Warren added, “When Mitt Romney stands up and says on the first day of his presidency, he will repeal all financial reforms, I think that’s very relevant to the conversation about where Scott Brown is and where Scott Brown will be.”

Brown’s campaign said Warren was “fabricating” Brown’s record.

“Once again, Elizabeth Warren is not being straight with the voters, and her attacks on Scott Brown are extremely hypocritical given the fact that her top cheerleader and adviser, Senator Chuck Schumer, was revealed this week to be running around Wall Street trying to raise money to help fund her campaign,” said Alleigh Marre, a Brown campaign spokeswoman.

“Warren can try and rewrite her own history, but we’re not going to let her fabricate Scott Brown’s record. Senator Brown worked across the aisle with Barney Frank and broke with his party to cast the deciding vote for the Wall Street reform bill that Warren described as the ‘toughest in three generations.’”