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Trump’s New Mouthpiece Faces Fresh Trouble Over Lawyer Claims

One group is determined to get to the bottom of the White House press secretary’s legal pedigree.

A watchdog has turned up the heat on Katie Zacharia over her dubious claims of being a lawyer.

The Campaign for Accountability has asked the State Bar of California to investigate the new White House press secretary’s claims that she is an attorney after a report raised red flags about her background.

In a letter dated October 14, the watchdog asked the State Bar to probe whether Zacharia, a California resident, violated sections of the California Business and Professions Code that bar people from practicing law without an active license.

The group cited reporting by Popular Information’s Judd Legum that there is no evidence Zacharia ever passed a bar exam or has been admitted to practice law in any state—contrary to her repeated claims of being a lawyer.

“If that reporting is accurate, 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,” the watchdog wrote.

“Ms. Zacharia now speaks for the President of the United States from the White House podium. She has relied on her legal pedigree to give her credibility both in that role and to her statements as a television legal commentator,” it continued.

White House communications director Steven Cheung called the group “a radical leftist-organization run by rabid numbskulls suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Nobody takes them seriously because they are deranged low lifes.”

The State Bar of California said it could not confirm whether it has received any complaint or is conducting any investigation, citing confidentiality laws.

“Disciplinary investigations become public if and when a notice of disciplinary charges is filed with the State Bar Court or when a stipulation to a particular level of discipline is accepted and filed by the Court,” a spokesperson said.

Zacharia, 41, graduated from Pepperdine Caruso Law School in 2011. That same year, she moved to Beijing, China, to join her husband Tyler, who had already been living there.

Her LinkedIn page indicates that she worked as an associate at the elite firm Zhong Lun from 2011 to 2013. She also worked as general counsel for Fix California, a political organization founded by Trump loyalist and former Kennedy Center chief Ric Grenell.

When reporters pressed her about her credentials on Tuesday, Zacharia claimed that she passed the bar “when I moved to China.”

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The White House previously said in a statement that Zacharia “worked on international transaction law” in China and “practiced international transactional law, with all the appropriate credentials.”

“The public is entitled to rely on the representation that a person who calls herself a lawyer is in fact licensed to practice law. California law protects that reliance by making it a crime for an unlicensed person to hold herself out as entitled to practice,” Campaign for Accountability said.

“That protection means little if it is not enforced against prominent figures who make such claims to millions of viewers.”

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Julia OrnedoReporter

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