The incoming White House press secretary has made a name for herself as an on-air legal expert, claiming she’s an attorney. But is she?
Katie Zacharia is not actually licensed to practice law anywhere in the country, according to a report published Tuesday by Popular Info’s Judd Legum.
The 42-year-old obtained her JD from Pepperdine Caruso Law in 2011, according to her LinkedIn profile. Her work history also includes a gig as “general counsel” for a Ric Grenell–operated nonprofit based in California, but Legum found she held no credentials to practice law there.
Zacharia is not listed as a member of the bar in Texas or Washington, D.C., either, despite evidence that she also worked there in a legal capacity.
In fact, after analyzing state bar association databases from all 50 states and Washington, Legum found that Zacharia never actually passed the qualifying legal exam anywhere.
In an emailed response about Zacharia’s dubious resume, the White House referred Legum to Donald Trump’s Friday Truth Social post, in which he declared Zacharia’s appointment under the pretext that she is a “distinguished Graduate of Pepperdine University, and the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, an attorney, and a frequent Commentator on outlets, including Fox News and Newsmax.”
The White House did not offer any other supporting evidence for Zacharia’s work history.
But holding a JD is not enough to be an attorney—it is merely the educational bare minimum. To actually be an attorney, Zacharia would need to pass a state bar.
That’s not her only smudged truth. Zacharia has previously claimed that the abortion pill, mifepristone, came straight from Nazi Germany, and used her Truth Social account to elevate the Pizzagate conspiracy, which baselessly accused Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats of participating in a child sex trafficking ring in the basement of a Washington pizzeria named Comet Ping Pong. (In 2016, the unfounded Pizzagate murmurs inspired an armed gunman to drive up from North Carolina and open fire inside the restaurant, only to discover the facility has no basement and was not holding children captive.)