White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia defended calling herself a lawyer even though she is not licensed to be an attorney at law.
The Wall Street Journal reported that after graduating from Pepperdine Law School in 2011, Zacharia took the California bar exam but did not pass.
In an appearance on Jack Posobiec’s show on Real America’s Voice, Zacharia said that “a lot of the misinformation, miscommunication” is “around the fact that I labeled myself a lawyer, and I consulted for a very long time many people in the field. ‘Is it okay and acceptable if I label myself lawyer, not attorney at law, not Katie Zacharia esquire, but lawyer, and provide legal analysis, not legal advice. And they said absolutely, across the board. You can call yourself a lawyer.'”
Since Zacharia took the post, there have been questions raised of her legal credentials, as she has talked of being a lawyer in numerous media appearances. Trump referred to her as an “attorney” in a Truth Social post announcing her selection. She also was general counsel of the advocacy group Fix California, founded by Ric Grenell.
On Tuesday, shortly after giving her first press briefing, Zacharia appeared with Donald Trump as he embarked on a three-day campaign swing. When a reporter asked Trump where she passed the bar exam, he turned to her and she said, “When I moved to China.” She told The New York Times that she misunderstood the question and thought it was asking for information of where she was after law school.
In the interview with Posobiec, Zacharia said that she got a job in the international practice division of a Chinese law firm. “There’s no Chinese bar,” she said. “I had enough credentials, which was my law degree, to be able to do this practice. And these were multi-million dollar agreements and transactions that were cross border, and there I had all the necessary requirements to do that.”
The Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the State Bar of California on Wednesday, challenging her description of herself as a lawyer and as a general counsel.
In her Real America’s Voice interview, Zacharia also described the scramble to prepare for Tuesday’s briefing. After calling on three reporters, she called an end of the briefing, which lasted just 14 minutes. Zacharia said that she received the briefing materials only the night before and woke up at 3 a.m. to prepare. It wasn’t until about 8 a.m., she said, that the materials were finalized. “I never had a full briefing beforehand,” she said.
She also was asked about the inevitability of a Saturday Night Live skit, and said that she would like a “Scarlett Johansson type character.” But she said that she is not watching “anything right now except what he’s doing and focusing on what the president is up to and trying to amplify that.” “I do not want to see any of the other X or Instagram or TV right now.” She will get a short reprieve, as new episodes of SNL are not scheduled for the next two weeks.