Katie Zacharia Bar Exam: Press Secretary Addresses Failure
The katie zacharia bar exam controversy entered a new phase Thursday night when the White House press secretary acknowledged on television that she never passed the California bar exam. Appearing on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Zacharia said reports that she had failed were correct and confirmed she never sat for the exam a second time.
The admission followed a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday that the new press secretary had failed the bar in her home state of California before moving to China, a report that fueled days of questions about the legal credentials she has claimed on television and social media.
“Inconsequential” Results
Earlier Thursday, in an interview with the conservative outlet Real America’s Voice, Zacharia explained that she took the exam while preparing to marry her husband and move with him to China, where he worked for a private equity firm. She described herself at the time as distracted and overwhelmed by the wedding and the move.
She said she had already pre-registered for the exam and did not want to withdraw, so she decided to take it and see what happened. She characterized the results as of little consequence, reasoning that she would not need a U.S. bar license while living in China, and left the country shortly afterward.
In Beijing, she worked in the international practice of a major Chinese law firm, handling cross-border transactions and multimillion-dollar shareholder agreements, she said.
Defending the Lawyer Title
Zacharia argued she was justified in presenting herself as a lawyer. She said legal professionals had assured her that, with a law degree and international transactional experience, she could call herself a lawyer and offer legal analysis as long as she was not giving legal advice or claiming to be an attorney at law.
She added that she did not retake the bar after returning to the United States because of the birth of her first child.
The scrutiny is not going away. Trump described Zacharia, 41, as “an attorney” when announcing her appointment, and the watchdog Campaign for Accountability called Wednesday for the California Bar Association to investigate whether she improperly presented herself as a lawyer. In California, calling oneself a lawyer without a license is a crime. Journalists have found no record of her holding a law license in any U.S. state, and the state bar has said it has no record of her under either her married or maiden name.
Zacharia, a Pepperdine law school graduate who succeeded Karoline Leavitt at the podium earlier this year, said she was careful in how she described her credentials.
Source: Axios