It’s been a rough week for new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia, and it’s not even over yet. In addition to her first press briefing being slammed, she’s also under scrutiny for reportedly never passing the bar yet still calling herself a lawyer.
“I actually felt some sympathy for her,” said Adam Carter out of Audacy station WCCO News Talk of Zacharia’s first press briefing on Wednesday that lasted just 14 minutes. His co-host on the Adam & Jordana show, Jordana Green, also said she felt “really bad” for the new press secretary, but noted that Zacharia was looking at notes and struggled to answer questions.
President Donald Trump announced that Zacharia, 41, would step into the position formerly held by Karoline Leavitt, who left to spend more time with her family and was announced as a new Fox News contributor this month, in an Oct. 9 Truth Social post. In the post, the president called Zacharia an “attorney” among other titles from her resume, including her work as a commenter for Newsmax and Fox News.
An exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal said that Zacharia hasn’t passed the bar exam in the U.S., citing a person with “direct knowledge of the matter.” While she sat for the California bar exam in 2011 after graduating from law school at Pepperdine University, Zacharia didn’t pass, according to the report.
“She took the exam around the time she was planning a wedding and preparing to move to China with her future husband, the person said,” per the WSJ.
Pepperdine said that Zacharia was a graduate of its Caruso School of Law in a press release congratulating her on her appointment as press secretary. According to the school, she is currently involved as a member of the law school’s Dean’s Council.
It also cited her LinkedIn profile and said she “previously served as a spokesperson and deputy assistant secretary for public affairs for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security before transitioning to her role as a senior communications advisor at Trump Media & Technology Group,” as well as serving as director of development for special projects at Pepperdine from 2023 to 2025. Zacharia has also worked as counsel to a group called Fix California, reportedly an advisory position.
“In China, Zacharia worked for a Chinese law firm’s international-practice team on multimillion-dollar shareholder agreements involving investments through the World Bank,” said USA Today, referring to the unnamed source with knowledge of the matter. It added that “Zacharia did not attempt to take the bar exam a second time.”
Zacharia, said: “I practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials,” in a statement provided to USA Today.
That outlet also noted that Zacharia has said she’s a lawyer in television appearances and in a previous version of her biography on the social media site X. Zacharia told the New York Times that she consulted with Pepperdine’s president about how she could identify herself before making television appearances and that she was told to identify as a lawyer rather than as an attorney.
“She also consulted with other attorneys who agreed she could describe herself as a lawyer because she has a law degree, according to the source, who noted that she was providing legal analysis on television, not advice,” USA Today said.
Still, “several lawyers told NBC News that ‘lawyer’ is widely understood to refer to someone who has passed the bar exam and is licensed to practice law,” NBC News noted.
Now, Zacharia isn’t required to be a lawyer to hold the press secretary position. Confusing communication about her credentials hasn’t helped her reputation this week, though. USA Today said some have even questioned whether Zacharia violated the law by misrepresenting herself.
Campaign for Accountability (CfA), a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog group, even filed a complaint with the State Bar of California Wednesday. In the complaint, it requested an investigation into whether Katie Zacharia violated California law “by repeatedly holding herself out as a lawyer.”
Meanwhile, USA Today said that Trump and White House officials “have publicly rallied behind Zacharia.” White house Director of Communications Steve Cheung said in an X post that CfA is “a radical leftist-organization run by rabid numbskulls suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” adding: “Nobody takes them seriously because they are deranged low lifes.”
