Katie Zacharia’s long resume includes stints as an unqualified legal commentator, an associate at a Chinese law firm, an uncredentialed general counsel, and—in her own words—a participant in “sort of a pyramid scheme.”
The 41-year-old White House press secretary told Wired Thursday that she used to be an affiliate marketer for Beachbody, a multilevel marketing operation that sold fitness programs and supplements.
She shared that she was brought into the MLM by a friend and promoted one of the company’s nutrition shakes, labeled Shakeology. She eventually stopped drinking the shakes because of its vitamin A levels, which she told Wired concerned her while she was pregnant.
Beachbody rebranded to BODi in 2023. The company noted to Wired that Zacharia had never worked for them as an employee; she was one of Beachbody’s 300,000 “independent Team Beachbody distributors” in 2013.
A spokesperson for the company also told the magazine that it would be a “misrepresentation” to compare Zacharia’s time at Beachbody with the current iteration of the fitness brand, which has since moved away from the MLM structure in favor of a traditional direct-to-consumer pipeline.
Beachbody was the progenitor of the 90-day P90X workout regimen, an extreme home fitness DVD program that captivated the country when it first hit the market in 2005, and Insanity, another popular home fitness program that launched four years later. Since then, however, Beachbody has been plagued by a number of legal troubles, including lawsuits that accused the company of scamming coaches, lying about the benefits of an anti-aging skincare treatment, and making misleading and unscientific claims about their Shakeology products.
Zacharia, meanwhile, has faced her own mountain of problems this week. Despite her self-advertised legal credentials, it quickly became clear the Pepperdine Caruso Law graduate never actually passed a state bar exam. Zacharia fessed up on Thursday, telling Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec that she was never licensed to practice law anywhere in the country.
“A lot of the misinformation, miscommunication, Jack, is around the fact that I labeled myself ‘lawyer,’ and I consulted for a very long time many people in the field, ‘Is it OK and acceptable if I label myself lawyer? Not attorney at law … and provide legal analysis, not legal advice?,’” she said. “They said ‘absolutely’ across the board.”
While some in the legal profession comprehend the semantic differences between the labels, the general public does not. Zacharia was branded as an attorney on Fox News and Newsmax dozens of times. Her PR campaign made a fool out of the president, too, revealing that Donald Trump doesn’t understand the difference either. Announcing her hire in a statement last week, Trump similarly referred to her as an attorney. The snag: She’s not.