TECHNICALLY

Trump’s Failed Press Secretary Makes One More Cringe Bid to Save Face

Katie Zacharia swears she really wasn’t lying about her legal credentials.

Katie Zacharia, who lasted just five days as White House press secretary, is still trying to set the record straight online about her lack of legal credentials.

While she claimed on her résumé that she has worked as an attorney, there is no evidence that she has passed the bar in any U.S. state, let alone her native California, where she claims to have done legal work.

Zacharia, 41, is attempting to assert that she actually wasn’t lying, posting a definition of attorney vs. lawyer on her social media.

She posted an extract of an American Bar Association article: “Technically, all attorneys are lawyers, but not all lawyers are attorneys, according to Matheu Nunn, a partner with Einhorn, Barbarito, Frost, Botwinick, Nunn & Musmanno in Denville, New Jersey. An attorney is someone who passed the bar examination and has been admitted to practice law in a jurisdiction. But a lawyer, who may have received the same legal training as an attorney, has not been admitted to practice law.

The article quoted Nunn as saying: “Both may provide legal guidance, but only the attorney can appear in court, whereas a lawyer can provide advice as a consultant or an adviser, in which the advice is based on their training and education.”

Her definition does not explain her claim that she worked as a “General Counsel” for a right-wing non-profit in California, nor why Fox News repeatedly referred to her as an “attorney” despite her own admission that she is not one.

While she did graduate from Pepperdine Caruso School of Law in 2011, legal experts have maintained that there is a difference between Zacharia’s credentials and those of an actual lawyer.

“A law school graduate is just that—a law school graduate,” Bruce Green, the director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham University School of Law, told The Washington Post.

“Someone in the U.S. who just flat-out calls themselves a lawyer, without further qualification or explanation, will mislead listeners or readers to think that they are permitted to practice law here in the U.S.—which they are not,” he told the paper.

During her brief stint at the White House, Zacharia claimed that she had worked as an attorney in China, which only added to the confusion, as experts questioned the notion that a fresh law school graduate from the U.S. could have become a licensed attorney in the communist country.

Play Video

In addition to her murky legal credentials, her shaky first press briefing added to the scrutiny she faced.

The press conference was widely seen as a disaster, as she read uncertainly from prepared notes and took just three softball questions from MAGA-friendly outlets. She left the podium after 14 minutes with most reporters’ hands still raised.

Zacharia tried to clean up the situation with interviews on Fox News in the following days, but those also did not help her case. Anchor Sean Hannity pressed her unusually forcefully for a MAGA guest, peppering her about her credentials and her first performance on the job. Her follow-up interview the next morning with the Fox & Friends couch crew didn’t go over much better.

By the next morning, Trump announced she was leaving the White House, telling reporters that he told her, “Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider.”

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Annabella RosciglioneReporter

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.