New White House press secretary calls confusion over legal credentials misunderstanding
White House press secretary Katie Zacharia joins President Donald Trump as he departs on the South Lawn of the White House on Oct. 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Updated: President Donald Trump’s new White House press secretary has said the confusion over her legal credentials has been a misunderstanding, according to a story by the New York Times.
When Katie Zacharia was asked in which state she passed the bar, she “assumed the question was, ‘Where were you after law school?’” Zacharia told the New York Times.
She noted Tuesday that this was “all I could hear over the sound of Marine One,” she told the New York Times.
That day, Zacharia had twice responded with, “When I moved to China,” to the question about the bar.
There is long-standing debate over the terms “lawyer” and “attorney”—often used interchangeably. Some use “lawyer” to describe a person with a JD, and some use “attorney” to refer only to those who have passed the bar exam.
But both terms require licensure by a state or other jurisdiction’s supreme court, says Sophie Martin, the senior managing director of operations and administration for the Helix Bar Review at the AccessLex Institute. And California code says a candidate must have passed the bar exam to be called a lawyer.
Zacharia did graduate from the Pepperdine University Rick J. Caruso School of Law in 2011.
While the New York Times reporter didn’t have the chance to ask her directly whether Zacharia passed a bar exam, the Wall Street Journal reports that she took but did not pass the California bar exam after law school graduation.
On Wednesday, the Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit ethics watchdog group, filed a complaint with the State Bar of California calling for a probe into Zacharia’s credentials.
“Ms. Zacharia has repeatedly held herself out to the public as entitled to practice law without a license to do so, conduct California law treats as a crime,” according to the complaint.
See also:
Is she or isn’t she? Trump’s new press secretary claims she took the bar—in China
Updated Oct. 19 at 10:07 a.m. to include additional information about Katie Zacharia’s bar exam performance.
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