Katie Zacharia addresses criticism of calling herself a ‘lawyer’
by Mary McCue Bell · The Washington TimesKatie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, is clarifying that while she has called herself a lawyer, she never passed the bar exam.
Following criticism that she called herself a lawyer, President Trump’s chief spokesperson said that after graduating law school and failing the bar the first time, she did not retake the exam.
Ms. Zacharia earned a law degree from Pepperdine University’s Caruso School of Law in 2011, married and began working as an associate on the international practice team at Beijing’s Zhong Lun Law Firm.
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She and her husband, Tyler Zacharia, had been in a long-distance relationship before she jetted off to China, having been preregistered to take the bar before moving.
“And we just said, ‘Let’s take this time, and I’ll take the bar and let’s see what happens.’ The results are somewhat inconsequential because I knew I wouldn’t need the bar in China, and we left shortly thereafter,” she told conservative news outlet Human Events.
She said that after moving to China, she “didn’t really think much of the bar results or consider that something that I needed to focus on.”
After her 14-minute stint at the podium Tuesday, reporters asked where she passed the bar exam, to which Ms. Zacharia said, “When I moved to China.”
“There’s no Chinese bar. I had enough credentials, which was my law degree, to be able to do this practice,” she said in the Thursday interview.
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China’s national legal qualification exam exists but can only be taken by Chinese citizens.
After failing the bar the first time, she said that she did not try again because of the pregnancy with her oldest son.
She said the “misinformation” and “miscommunication” are around calling herself a lawyer.
“I consulted for a very long time many people in the field [asking], ‘Is it OK and acceptable if I label myself lawyer, not attorney at law, not Katie Zacharia Esquire, but lawyer, and provide legal analysis, not legal advice?’ And they said, ’Absolutely, absolutely across the board. You can call yourself a lawyer,’” Ms. Zacharia said.
Thursday on Fox News, Sean Hannity pressed Ms. Zacharia over social media posts in which she was identified as an attorney, to which she answered, “I think they were retweets, and I corrected the record and said that [they’re] not endorsing the title; they’re retweets of a title that had been given.”
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Her first White House briefing on Tuesday — the first major test as the Trump administration’s newest face — lasted 14 minutes while she took questions from three outlets.
“What I feel,” she told Mr. Hannity, “is I really stepped up to the plate to do the press conference … with very little prep time. I received briefing materials in the morning of Tuesday.”
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Mary McCue Bell
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