New White House press secretary Katie Zacharia shared at least 15 social media posts identifying her as an “attorney” over the past two years, despite having failed the California bar exam and acknowledging publicly she had been advised not to use that term.
The posts, published to Zacharia’s X and Truth Social accounts between April 2025 and September 2026, included Fox News headlines and One America News segments identifying her as an attorney, a designation she repeatedly amplified to her followers.
At least one of those posts has since been deleted, but posts reviewed by CNN show that Zacharia had amplified the title across both platforms. She also repeatedly referred to herself as a lawyer in television and podcast appearances, according to a review of interview transcripts.
The posts raise new questions about how Zacharia publicly presented her legal credentials after graduating from Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law in 2011.
A source familiar with her thinking confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that she had failed the bar exam that year.
In interviews with The New York Times and Real America’s Voice, Zacharia said she had consulted Pepperdine’s president and others about how to describe her qualifications before appearing on television, and was told she could use the term “lawyer,” but not “attorney” or “esquire.” A source familiar with her thinking said that sharing the posts on social media was not intended to be an endorsement of using the title “attorney.”
“They said absolutely across the board, you can call yourself a lawyer, you have a JD, and, to buffer that, you have international legal experience in transactional law, which gives you the ability to analyze it, not necessarily give advice,” Zacharia told Real America’s Voice.
California requires those who practice law in the state to have passed the bar exam and makes it a misdemeanor to pretend to be a lawyer. The California bar association told CNN it had no record of her “having been licensed to practice law in California,” though it said it could not comment on whether she took the bar exam, citing confidentiality requirements.
“The truth is, is I was very careful how I executed this, and I never came across as someone who was an attorney at law,” Zacharia told Real America’s Voice.
But despite not having passed the bar in the state where she worked, Zacharia repeatedly promoted coverage that called her an attorney.
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On April 26, 2025, Zacharia shared a Fox News headline on X reading, “Only Democrats don’t want proof of citizenship in US elections, attorney says.” The post has since been deleted.
She also shared the same headline six times on Truth Social that day, according to six posts on her account and another again on May 14.
On August 23, 2025, she shared another Fox News headline describing her as an attorney, this time in a segment criticizing California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
She also reposted six One America News posts identifying her as “Attorney”: on May 14, 2026, two posts on June 4, another on June 17, and two posts on September 11.
“I’m a lawyer,” she said during an appearance on “The Greg Kelly Show” in early October, while discussing the process for confirming federal attorney nominees.
In an October 2023 interview with a Christian podcast, Zacharia said she attended Pepperdine’s law school before she moved to Beijing, where she said worked in the legal field for “about two, two and a half years.”
Zacharia told Real America’s Voice that when she moved to Beijing to join her husband – with whom she had previously been in a long-distance relationship – she considered the result of the bar exam “inconsequential,” because it wouldn’t affect her ability to work in China.
“I didn’t really think much of the bar results or consider that something that I needed to focus on,” she said.
Zacharia said she worked in the “international practice division” at Zhong Lun Law firm, one of four associates under a senior partner who worked on multi-million dollar shareholder deals.
“I had all the necessary requirements to do that,” she said.
According to Chinese law, foreigners are not eligible to take China’s bar exam, meaning they are unable to work as licensed lawyers and cannot participate in litigation work.
Questions about Zacharia’s credentials spilled into public view this week when reporters pressed Trump about where his new press secretary had passed the bar exam after the investigative newsletter Popular Information reported it was unclear if she had ever taken it.
Asked by the president which state she had passed the exam in, Zacharia responded, “When I moved to China.” She subsequently told The New York Times that she had misheard the question over the sound of Marine One and thought she was being asked where she went after law school.
“I assumed the question was, ‘Where were you after law school?’” she told the paper.
A watchdog group, Campaign for Accountability, has asked the State Bar of California to investigate whether Zacharia misrepresented her legal qualifications.
The White House has defended Zacharia, with a spokesman saying she was “uniquely qualified and whip smart to help inform the American people about all the great things President Trump and his Administration have been doing.”
The-CNN-Wire
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