Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, appeared to confirm Thursday that she didn’t pass the California bar exam, saying the results were “somewhat inconsequential” because she planned to move to China in 2011 for her husband’s work.
Zacharia’s record of identifying herself as a lawyer and attorney came under scrutiny in recent days after reports surfaced that she had not passed the bar or appeared to practice in the United States.
Asked about those reports on Thursday by the right-wing media outlet Real America’s Voice, Zacharia said she had already registered to take the test when she decided to move to China to join her husband.
“I didn’t want to withdraw from that, and we knew we would be moving out to China. And I was obviously incredibly distracted and overwhelmed and excited for finally being married to someone who I’d been long-distance from for at least a year,” she said. “… And after moving to China, I didn’t really think much of the bar results or consider that something that I needed to focus on.”
The newsletter Popular Information first reported that Zacharia repeatedly identified herself as an attorney and lawyer in television appearances, and listed a general counsel job on her résumé, but the outlet could not find any evidence she had passed a state bar exam, a requirement for lawyers in the United States.
A Washington Post review also turned up no records of a state bar license in California, where she resides according to public records, or in other states. Several legal experts told The Post that she could not call herself a lawyer or an attorney without being licensed by a state bar.
Zacharia created additional confusion earlier this week when she responded to questions outside of the White House about where she took the bar exam by saying, “When I moved to China.” Legal experts told The Post that only Chinese nationals can take the country’s bar exam and that work she did at a Chinese law firm must have been limited and supervised because she was not a citizen.
The White House repeatedly told The Post and other outlets that Zacharia practiced with “all the appropriate credentials.”
Two nonprofit groups on Wednesday filed formal complaints over Zacharia, asking the State Bar of California to investigate whether she engaged in the “unlawful practice of law” by providing legal advice in media appearances and in her work as general counsel at Fix California, a nonprofit started by Trump administration official Richard Grenell. One group asked California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) to investigate as well.
On Wednesday evening, the Wall Street Journal first reported that Zacharia took the bar exam but did not pass.
In the interview with Real America’s Voice, Zacharia called the debate about her legal credentials “misinformation” and “miscommunication.” She said she consulted people in the legal profession who assured her she could call herself a “lawyer” without issue considering she has a law degree, but not an “attorney at law” or “Katie Zacharia, Esquire.”
The people also told her, she said, that she could provide “legal analysis, not legal advice.” She did not address her time working as a general counsel in California, one of the sources of the bar complaints filed Wednesday.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment about her general counsel work.
“It’s unfortunate that people dub this as some kind of conspiracy or want to put me in a camp,” she said. “The truth is, is I was very careful how I executed this and I never came across as someone who was an attorney-in-law.”
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