{ "archive_path": "archive/1791911710.483011", "base_url": "www.mediaite.com/media/news/trumps-new-press-sec-says-shes-a-lawyer-but-theres-no-evidence-she-ever-passed-the-bar-exam-report", "basename": "", "bookmarked_date": "2026-10-13 17:15", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.mediaite.com/media/news/trumps-new-press-sec-says-shes-a-lawyer-but-theres-no-evidence-she-ever-passed-the-bar-exam-report", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.mediaite.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.mediaite.com/media/news/trumps-new-press-sec-says-shes-a-lawyer-but-theres-no-evidence-she-ever-passed-the-bar-exam-report/index.html" }, "domain": "www.mediaite.com", "extension": "", "hash": "9GZSK26KN99XPP825ZAD", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.mediaite.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-13T19:16:50.074092+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1791911710.483011", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-13T19:16:49.311836+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/trumps-new-press-sec-says-shes-a-lawyer-but-theres-no-evidence-she-ever-passed-the-bar-exam-report/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-13T19:16:50.803879+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1791911710.483011", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-13T19:16:50.083381+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/trumps-new-press-sec-says-shes-a-lawyer-but-theres-no-evidence-she-ever-passed-the-bar-exam-report/" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-10-13T19:17:05.928754+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1791911710.483011", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-13T19:17:02.083089+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmpvbrv83y3", "https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/trumps-new-press-sec-says-shes-a-lawyer-but-theres-no-evidence-she-ever-passed-the-bar-exam-report/" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-10-13T19:17:02.035168+00:00", "index_texts": [ "AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson\nNewly-minted White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia has repeatedly identified herself as a \u201clawyer,\u201d but a report by independent journalist Judd Legum says her name does not appear as a member on any state bar association website, and a review by Mediaite of her claims of working as a lawyer in China do not seem to add up.\nZacharia was announced as the latest MAGA mouthpiece for President Donald Trump\u2019s administration earlier this month, taking over after her predecessor Karoline Leavitt resigned after the birth of her second child. She kicked off her tenure presiding over the White House Press Briefing Room Tuesday to decidedly brutal reviews.\nAs Legum\u2019s report on his Popular Information website noted Tuesday morning, Zacharia has repeatedly publicly identified herself as an \u201cattorney\u201d or \u201clawyer\u201d (there is no meaningful legal difference between those two terms) during television and podcast appearances.\nIn Trump\u2019s Truth Social post touting her hiring, he described her as \u201ca 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.\u201d Zacharia \u201cwas also identified on screen as a lawyer during at least 18 appearances on Fox News since March 2025,\u201d wrote Legum.\nHowever, Legum continued, \u201cthere is no evidence that Zacharia ever passed a bar exam or has been admitted to practice law in any state.\u201d\nZacharia\u2019s LinkedIn profile lists several legal jobs after her graduation from law school in 2011, including working as an \u201cAssociate\u201d in the \u201cInternational Practice Team\u201d for the Zhong Lan Law Firm in Beijing, China and as \u201cGeneral Counsel\u201d for a nonprofit organization called \u201cFix California.\u201d\nAs Legum\u2019s report noted, \u201c[I]t is quite plausible for a law school graduate who is not admitted to practice law in any state to work for a firm in China, since the work may not involve American courts,\u201d but she also repeatedly claimed that she was an \u201coutside counsel to the IFC and the World Bank\u201d during this period, a much less believable claim, that two major international institutions would be willing to hire a brand-new law school graduate with no bar admission.\nLegum searched for Zacharia\u2019s name on the websites for the State Bar of California, where she graduated and currently lives, and then two other places she has worked, in Texas and D.C. Eventually, he searched all 50 states and D.C. looking for any evidence Zacharia \u201cwas admitted to practice law anywhere \u2014 and found none.\u201d\nThere is plenty of evidence Zacharia did attend Pepperdine\u2019s law school and graduate. For starters, she is listed as an alumna member of the school\u2019s \u201cDean\u2019s Council\u201d as \u201cKatie S. Zacharia (\u201907, JD \u201911);\u201d it is highly unlikely that Pepperdine would not have accurate information on whether it actually granted her a diploma.\nBut merely graduating from law school and earning a juris doctor degree is not enough to hold oneself out to the public as an \u201cattorney\u201d without also being admitted to a bar association, which generally requires passing a background check and bar exam.\nIf an attorney is admitted to a bar association and then decides to go voluntarily inactive, or is involuntarily suspended or disbarred from the practice of law, it is standard to still include their name in the bar association\u2019s listings, with the appropriate status designation and any disciplinary history, if relevant.\nAs an example, Adam Hoffman, the attorney and accused child rapist who received a controversially lenient plea deal from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton\u2019s office despite admitting that he \u201cwith the intent to arouse or gratify my sexual desire, touch genitals of [the victim, identified by initials] \u2026without the complainant\u2019s consent,\u201d was ordered by the judge to surrender his Texas bar license. When Mediaite reviewed the Texas Bar\u2019s online records, Hoffman was listed as \u201cNot Eligible to Practice in Texas\u201d due to \u201cResignation in lieu of discipline.\u201d He was also admitted in Nebraska and his license is \u201cRegular inactive\u201d there.\nAttorneys chose to go inactive for many noncontroversial reasons, including to avoid having to keep up with continuing legal education and trust account reporting requirements if they are in a job that does not have them currently providing legal representation to any clients. I put my own Florida Bar license on voluntary inactive status for several years after shifting to a career in journalism, and until I reactivated my license earlier this year, I was listed on the website as an \u201cinactive\u201d attorney and am now back as a \u201cMember in Good Standing.\u201d\nIn other words, if Zacharia is not listed on any state bar website, that would seem to indicate she was never admitted in the first place, due to not taking the bar exam, not passing it, or having some issue with her background check and application that caused them to not approve her for admission.\nIn many states, including California, publicly claiming you are an attorney is a crime, as Legum noted. The California law declares it to be \u201ca misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in a county jail or by a fine of up to one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both\u201d for \u201c[a]ny person advertising or holding himself or herself out as practicing or entitled to practice law or otherwise practicing law who is not an active licensee of the State Bar, or otherwise authorized pursuant to statute or court rule to practice law in this state at the time of doing so.\u201d Second offenses carry a minimum jail sentence of 90 days.\nBar associations\u2019 professional responsibility and ethics rules put the burden of compliance on the attorney to accurately inform the public of their status. Zacharia has been, as Legum pointed out, identified as an \u201cattorney\u201d or \u201clawyer\u201d in many media appearances, but that would have come from information she provided to the media outlets. (I do not recall any television, radio, podcast, or other interview I have ever done that asked me to verify my job title or membership status with the Florida Bar, and would not reasonably expect a media outlet to do so for guest commentators.)\nLegum reached out to White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly for comment on Zacharia\u2019s status, \u201cincluding whether she was ever admitted to practice law in any state,\u201d and received a response from \u201ca general White House Press Office email account\u201d that directed him to \u201cthe President\u2019s TRUTH on Katie,\u201d referring to Trump\u2019s social media post that called her an \u201cattorney.\u201d\nLate morning Tuesday, Trump and Zacharia spoke to the media outside the White House before traveling to Alaska, and the gathered reporters shouted several questions asking where she passed the bar exam.\nThe audio is difficult to hear, but it appears Zacharia replied, \u201cwhen I moved to China,\u201d presumably referring to her work for the law firm in Beijing.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAdmittance to a foreign bar association would not entitle her to practice law in the U.S. at all, obviously, but it is still not clear what, if any, status Zacharia had in China.\nChina is very restrictive about who is allowed to practice law and does not allow noncitizens to become lawyers or even sit for the bar exam. Foreigners already admitted to practice law in another country can provide advice about their own jurisdiction to clients in China but must have already practiced law for at least two years in their home country first before legally being allowed to practice as a \u201cForeign Representative Attorney.\u201d\nZacharia\u2019s LinkedIn profile says she graduated in 2011 and started working for the Beijing firm a few months later; she does not list any job before then that appears to meet the two-year requirement.\nMediaite was unable to find any reporting suggesting that Zacharia has dual U.S.-Chinese citizenship, but even if she did, she still would have had to complete a one-year internship at a Chinese law firm (and pass the Chinese bar exam, the \u201cNational Unified Legal Professional Qualification Examination,\u201d which is only administered in Chinese), before being admitted to practice.\nIn an article at the South China Morning Post flagged by independent political reporter Roger Sollenberger, the Zhong Lun law firm where she says she worked is described as \u201cone of China\u2019s leading law firms.\u201d\nSida Liu, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Hong Kong, described Zhong Lun as an elite law firm that is \u201coften grouped among the country\u2019s so-called red circle firms \u2013 a term roughly comparable to the \u2018magic circle\u2019 firms in London or \u2018white shoe\u2019 firms in New York.\u201d Liu commented that it became common practice over the past decade for such firms to be \u201cexpanding their international practices and hiring foreign-trained lawyers to support cross-border work.\u201d It is common for such Chinese firms to hire foreigners as law clerks, research assistants, consultants, or some other non-lawyer role, but again, that is not actually practicing law.\nNotably the South China Morning Post\u2019s report does not quote any sources, even anonymously, who had direct knowledge of Zacharia\u2019s work in China, although the article does say that she \u201creportedly knows enough basic Chinese to occasionally interject in a conversation and catch people off guard,\u201d describing her language knowledge as \u201cbasic\u201d and not at the level of fluency needed to \u201cconduct complex diplomatic or legal discussions in Chinese.\u201d\nIf in fact Zacharia has not been admitted to any bar association but does want to be at some point in the future, her numerous public representations she was already an attorney could end up being a big problem for her. Many attorneys have managed to get admitted to the bar despite past histories of crimes or ethical violations \u2014 with the expectation that they disclose such incidents in their applications and express remorse and a commitment not to repeat such offenses \u2014 but bar associations tend to crack down hard on those attempting the unauthorized practice of law or otherwise falsely publicly claiming to be attorneys.\nWatch the clip above via CNN.\nThis article has been updated with additional information.\nNew: The Mediaite One-Sheet \"Newsletter of Newsletters\"Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. 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