Days into her new job, White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia is facing scrutiny over her claims to be a lawyer, after a watchdog group asked California regulators to investigate.
The Campaign for Accountability, a Washington-based nonprofit, filed a complaint on Wednesday with the State Bar of California, which oversees attorney licensing.
The group says Zacharia has presented herself as a lawyer to bolster her credibility as a television legal commentator and now as President Donald Trump’s spokesperson. Its director, Michelle Kuppersmith, noted that falsely claiming to be a lawyer is a crime in California, and urged the bar to determine whether Zacharia misled the public.
Zacharia’s LinkedIn profile says she earned a law degree from Pepperdine’s Caruso School of Law in 2011. Media reports have not found a license to practice law in any US state. Her Instagram bio describes her as a “wife, mom and lawyer.”
Questions sharpened on Tuesday, her first day in the role. Asked outside the White House where she had passed the bar exam, Zacharia said it was after she moved to China.
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Her LinkedIn profile lists an associate position at the Zhong Lun Law Firm in Beijing from 2011 to 2013, and a biography on the website of the pro-Trump group Trumpettes USA says she served as outside counsel to the World Bank and International Finance Corporation while there.
The explanation has raised more questions than it settled. China’s bar exam, the National Unified Legal Professional Qualification Examination, is open only to Chinese citizens. Foreigners have occasionally been allowed to practice in China, but generally only after several years of experience in their home countries, which does not appear to apply here.
Zacharia responded to the criticism in a statement to The Associated Press, “I practice international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials,” she said, without giving specifics.
Her debut at the podium also drew attention and criticism. The briefing lasted under 15 minutes, and she spent much of it thanking Trump and reading prepared remarks, at times hesitating and repeating herself. She said she had wanted to work for him for a long time.
Zacharia is a frequent guest on Fox News and Newsmax. During Trump’s second term she has worked as a communications adviser at the Department of Homeland Security, and since June as senior communications adviser at Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social.
Her LinkedIn profile also lists a 2024–2025 stint as general counsel for Fix California, a voter-rights group founded by a Trump administration official. She succeeds Karoline Leavitt, who Trump announced in August would step down.
