
The Briefing:
- Katie Zacharia, 41, officially took over as White House press secretary on Tuesday — the sixth person to hold the role across Donald Trump's two terms — after Trump announced her selection via Truth Social on October 9.
- Two separate investigations drove the controversy: The Bulwark recovered deleted X posts calling for habeas corpus suspension and sharing false vaccine data, while the newsletter Popular Information — as reported by The Daily Beast — found still-active Truth Social content in which Zacharia appeared to endorse Pizzagate and QAnon.
- Zacharia replaces Karoline Leavitt — the youngest press secretary in U.S. history — who officially left August 27 and has been confirmed as an on-air Fox News contributor starting November 1.
From Media Adviser to Government Spokesperson
Zacharia, a 41-year-old attorney who holds a law degree from Pepperdine University, was serving as a senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group — the company that operates Truth Social — when President Donald Trump announced her appointment on October 9. Writing on that same platform, Trump described her as "a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning." Zacharia responded with a post on X, calling the opportunity the honor of a lifetime and writing that Trump's leadership is "a blessing to this country."
Before landing at Trump Media, she had served briefly as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security before departing that post in March of this year. She also built a media presence as a conservative commentator on Fox News and Newsmax, and Trump credited her with involvement in his presidential campaigns across several battleground states. She is now the sixth person to serve as press secretary across Trump's two administrations.
Two Investigations, One Firestorm
The scrutiny that erupted in the days following her appointment drew from two distinct inquiries that early coverage frequently collapsed into one. The Bulwark, using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, recovered posts Zacharia had deleted from X — including content from a Twitter account she had wiped entirely in 2022. In a separate investigation, the newsletter Popular Information found posts still publicly visible on her Truth Social account, a platform she had apparently not scrubbed, in which she appeared to openly embrace the Pizzagate theory and engage repeatedly with QAnon. Those findings were reported by The Daily Beast.

Conspiracy Theories on the Record
Pizzagate, a theory that originated in 2016 and has been debunked consistently by law enforcement and independent fact-checkers, falsely alleges that prominent Democratic figures were involved in a child sex trafficking network. Popular Information's review of Zacharia's Truth Social activity showed her amplifying the theory and urging Fox News to cover it. In one post from that same session on the platform, she wrote that "the radical left Hollywood elitists are sick pedo cannibals." Additional posts showed her repeatedly engaging with QAnon — the movement built around the premise that Trump is covertly battling a child-abusing elite, and that he communicates guidance to his followers through coded signals.
Habeas Corpus and the California Takeover Call
The Bulwark's recovery of Zacharia's deleted X content uncovered a separate category of concern. A post from June 2025, written in direct response to a message from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller asserting that sanctuary cities constitute a criminal conspiracy, explicitly called on the Trump administration to suspend habeas corpus — the centuries-old legal safeguard requiring that those detained be brought before a judge. A second deleted post from the same month urged the federal government to take over California and named Governor Gavin Newsom directly. Newsom's office responded to the resurfaced material by labeling it "alarming."
False Vaccine Claims and an Unsupported School Shooting Allegation
The same Bulwark investigation surfaced a series of posts casting doubt on COVID-19 vaccines using data that does not appear in the published scientific record. Zacharia shared an article claiming that eight in ten women experienced a miscarriage following vaccination — a figure The Bulwark noted finds no support in available medical literature. A recovered 2022 Twitter account showed her repeatedly branding Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates a eugenicist and warning followers about what she characterized as a campaign to administer a toxic injection. A September 2025 post attributed at least a dozen school shootings to "leftist transgender assailants" — a claim with no documented factual foundation.
Succeeding the Youngest Press Secretary in U.S. History
Zacharia takes over from Karoline Leavitt, who at 29 holds the distinction of being the youngest person ever to serve as White House press secretary. Leavitt gave birth to her second child — a daughter named Viviana — in May 2026, returned to the briefing room, and then announced her resignation on August 12, officially leaving the post on August 27. Trump praised her tenure and asked her to continue as an outside adviser. She has since been confirmed as a Fox News contributor, with her start date set for November 1.
When the Spokesperson Comes From the President's Own Platform
Critics have also raised a structural question that vetting procedures alone cannot settle. Zacharia's most recent employer was the president's own commercially operated media company — the same platform on which many of the posts now under scrutiny were published or amplified. Whether someone who arrived at the government's podium directly from the executive's private media enterprise can be a credible, independent voice on behalf of the public interest is a question the transition itself did nothing to resolve.
Zacharia now stands at that podium carrying an unusually well-documented prior record — on constitutional protections, on vaccine science, and on theories the government she represents has formally and repeatedly contradicted. How she manages the gap between that record and the responsibilities of the job will shape both her tenure and the tone of the administration's evolving relationship with the press corps as the midterm cycle approaches.
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