LAW UNTO HERSELF

Trump’s Mouthpiece Drops Wild Excuse for First Week Fiasco

The president’s new press secretary seems to take a liberal view of what the word “lawyer” actually means.

Donald Trump’s new press secretary Katie Zacharia has blamed Marine One’s loud noise for her bizarre answer to whether or not she has passed the bar exam, which she has not.

Katie Zacharia, 41, has long described herself as a lawyer. The 80-year-old president referred to her as “an attorney” in a Truth Social post last week, trumpeting her as a “Graduate of Pepperdine University, and the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.”

OOF

Humiliating Truth About Katie Zacharia’s Legal Claim Exposed

William Vaillancourt

The problem, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, is that Zacharia actually failed the bar exam after graduating from the Christian college in California in 2011. She does not appear to be licensed to practice law anywhere else in the United States.

Reporters grilled her on the topic after her disastrous first briefing on Tuesday, which lasted all of 14 minutes and 12 seconds. A journalist asked where she had passed the bar as the president took questions next to the White House’s helipad later that afternoon. She replied: “When I moved to China.”

Zacharia’s attempted to clear things up in comments to the New York Times on Wednesday evening. “I assumed the question was, ‘Where were you after law school’,” she told the newspaper.

“That’s all I could hear over the sound of Marine One,” she went on. “And, wanting to respect protocol, the distance behind the president, kept me from moving closer to hear the question.”

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She then explained that after failing to pass the bar, she asked the president of Pepperdine University what she should call herself. She told the Times that they warned her off calling herself an “attorney” or using the word “esquire,” but assured her that “lawyer” shouldn’t be a problem.

In ordinary usage, calling someone a “lawyer” implies they’re qualified and licensed to practice law in at least one jurisdiction. The American Bar Association explicitly uses that definition, writing that it means “a licensed professional who advises and represents others in legal matters,” interchangeable with the words “attorney” and “counsel.”

The dictionary offers a broader interpretation. Merriam-Webster describes it as “one whose profession is to conduct lawsuits for clients or to advise as to legal rights and obligations in other matters.” That could arguably include paralegals, regulatory advisers, consumer rights advisers, trade union representatives, accountants, data protection officers, even patent agents.

Zacharia’s identifies herself on her LinkedIn profile as a former “general counsel” for Fix California, a conservative nonprofit run by MAGA loyalist Richard Grenell. “You can’t be a general counsel to a company in the United States unless you’re admitted to the bar to practice law,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley School of Law, told the Times.

“A general counsel implies that you’re practicing law, giving legal advice to the company,” he said. “You can’t practice law without a license.”

Zacharia herself, in an Aug. 31 Fox News appearance discussing the prosecution of the accused killer of Charlie Kirk, said, “As a lawyer, the procedural steps are absolutely critical to ensure that they get this right.”

Fox News has also described Zacharia as an attorney in its chyrons.

Campaign for Accountability, a watchdog organization, has taken a similar view. The group filed a complaint with the California State Bar Association on Wednesday, demanding a probe into whether Trump’s new press secretary “repeatedly held herself out to the public as entitled to practice law without a license to do so, conduct California treats as a crime.”

Zacharia also says on LinkedIn that she worked for two years at Zhong Lun Law Firm in China, where she moved with her husband Tyler after leaving Pepperdine. She claims she worked for the company on “international transaction law,” though it remains unclear what exactly that entailed.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.

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White House Communications Director Steven Cheung previously told the Daily Beast that Zacharia “is a fabulous and wonderful addition to the team.”

“She is uniquely qualified and whip smart to help inform the American people about all the great things President Trump and his Administration have been doing, and she will do an incredible job as Press Secretary,” he added.

Zacharia took just three questions from conservative outlets during her press briefing debut. At one point during her stilted delivery, she mixed up President Trump with her own husband.

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