Trump’s press secretary confirms she failed California bar exam

White House press secretary Katie Zacharia confirmed on Thursday that she failed the California bar exam after graduating from law school in 2011 and had never taken it again. Her admission confirms an earlier report by The Wall Street Journal and draws attention to President Donald Trump’s description of her as “an attorney” when he announced her appointment. [2] [9] [1] [3]

Zacharia earned a law degree from Pepperdine University in 2011, according to the university. A degree alone does not confer a licence to practise law in a US jurisdiction. A spokesperson for California’s state bar told the Associated Press that it had no record of her ever being licensed there under either her married or maiden name. Popular Information said its searches found no evidence of admission in any of the 50 states or Washington, DC; those searches are not formal statements from every bar. [4] [6] [8]

Zacharia said the exam result had seemed of little consequence because she was moving to China, where she worked in international transaction law. She said she consulted legal professionals before calling herself a “lawyer” when providing legal analysis and had not presented herself as an “attorney-at-law”. A person familiar with her work in China told the Journal that staff in the firm’s international division worked as legal consultants and did not need a Chinese lawyer’s licence. [7] [1]

Her explanation of her own use of “lawyer” does not account for Trump’s use of “an attorney” in his 9 October announcement. Asked on Fox News about social media posts describing her as an attorney, Zacharia said she believed they were reposts and that sharing them did not mean she endorsed the title.