White House press secretary Katie Zacharia has acknowledged that she never passed a bar exam, days after telling reporters she had passed one “when I moved to China”.
In an interview with the conservative commentator Jack Posobiec on right-wing streaming channel Real America’s Voice on Thursday, Zacharia said she sat the California bar exam after graduating from Pepperdine University’s law school in 2011 but did not pass.
She said the results were “somewhat inconsequential, because I knew I wouldn’t need the bar in China”, where she moved with her husband for his job.
“There’s no Chinese bar,” she said. “I had enough credentials, which was my law degree.”
China does have a bar exam. The National Unified Legal Professional Qualification Examination is required to practice as a lawyer on the mainland, but only Chinese citizens may sit it, under rules set by China’s Ministry of Justice.
Chinese law firms can hire foreign nationals, but they cannot be licensed as lawyers in China.
Zacharia told Posobiec there had been “a lot of misinformation” about the fact that she “labelled myself ‘lawyer’”, and that “absolutely across the board you can call yourself a lawyer”.
She said she had consulted “many people in the field”, without naming them. She told the New York Times on Wednesday that Pepperdine’s president had advised her she could call herself a “lawyer” but not an “attorney” or “esquire”.
In the same interview, asked how she balanced her personal life with her work, Zacharia gave a lengthy answer in which she said US President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory had put the United States back on the path to greatness.
“I remember this very distinctly, having just come from China, thinking, ‘How is China the next country on the horizon? They don’t even have proper toilets,’” she said.
The State Bar of California, which regulates lawyers in the state, told the South China Morning Post that it had no record of Zacharia having been licensed under either her married name or her maiden name, Black.
It said that, as a general matter, state law makes it unlawful for anyone who is not an active licensee, or otherwise authorised, to hold themselves out as practising or entitled to practice law in California.
Trump called Zacharia an attorney when he announced her appointment last week. She had previously said she practised international transaction law “with all the appropriate credentials”, and told the Times on Wednesday that she had misheard Tuesday’s question about the bar exam over the noise of the presidential helicopter.
On her LinkedIn profile, Zacharia lists herself as an associate at Zhong Lun Law Firm, one of China’s largest, from 2011 to 2013. She told Posobiec she was “offered a job at an international practice division of a Chinese law firm”.
Gary Gao, a Shanghai-based partner at the firm, told the Times that Zhong Lun often hired foreigners for language assistance and that “they are not practising Chinese law at any time”. He said her role would likely have resembled a paid internship.
Zacharia has also said on a podcast that she had been “the outside counsel to the IFC and the World Bank”, according to a clip first identified by the independent journalist Judd Legum.
On Wednesday, Campaign for Accountability – a watchdog group that does not disclose its donors – asked the State Bar to investigate whether Zacharia had broken state law by holding herself out as a lawyer, and whether her work as general counsel of Fix California, a non-profit organisation led by former Trump administration official Richard Grenell, amounted to unauthorised practice.
The group told the South China Morning Post that the State Bar had acknowledged receiving the complaint, and that it had also shared it with the DC Bar.
Michelle Kuppersmith, its executive director, said the distinction between “lawyer” and “attorney” was “a distinction without a difference”. “She was not entitled to hold herself out as a lawyer,” she said.
The State Bar said it could not confirm whether it had received a complaint or was investigating, as disciplinary matters are confidential.
The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the SCMP. Zhong Lun did not respond to a request for comment. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
