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New White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia is insisting she has “all the appropriate credentials” as questions continue to swirl about her claims she is an attorney.
Zacharia’s debut in the press briefing room Tuesday was bumpy, to say the least. She was announced as the latest MAGA mouthpiece for President Donald Trump’s administration earlier this month, taking over after her predecessor Karoline Leavitt resigned after the birth of her second child. Within minutes of her first appearance in her new role, Zacharia was buried in decidedly brutal reviews.
She’s also facing pointed questions about her résumé. The qualifications needed to work in the Trump administration are often described as exhibiting loyalty to the president and a talent for television appearances, but Zacharia has also repeatedly claimed she is a lawyer.
Tuesday morning, Judd Legum at Popular Information reviewed the attorney listings for all 50 state bar associations and the District of Columbia and could find “no evidence” that she passed any bar exam in any U.S. jurisdiction.
When asked by reporters where she passed a bar exam, she replied “when I moved to China, but as Mediaite reported earlier, the job she says she had at a law firm in Beijing does not appear to have met the requirements to actually be an attorney.
China does not allow noncitizens to join the bar association or even sit for the Chinese bar exam. The exam is widely reported to be notoriously difficult and is only administered in Chinese. Zacharia’s reported conversational but “basic” knowledge of Chinese seems unlikely to be at the level needed to succeed on that test, even if she were permitted to take it. (There is no evidence she has dual citizenship.)
Foreigners admitted in other jurisdictions are only allowed to work for Chinese law firms to provide legal advice regarding their home jurisdictions, but they must have already practiced law for at least two years in their home country first before legally being allowed to practice as a “Foreign Representative Attorney.” Zacharia’s work for the Zhong Lun firm began within months after her graduation; she could not have possibly completed two years of work as an attorney before then, even if she had actually passed a bar exam in an American jurisdiction.
Still, Zacharia continued to defend her résumé Tuesday as reporters tried to dig into her qualifications.
Politico’s Dasha Burns reported that Zacharia told her she had not wanted to live in China (there are several previous media reports that she moved to China because her husband got a job there) and said, “I practiced international transactional law, with all the appropriate credentials.”
In our prior report, I noted that Zacharia could have been employed by the law firm in China as a law clerk, research assistant, consultant, or some other type of non-lawyer role, but here she is explicitly claiming to have “practiced law” and to have earned the “appropriate credentials” to do so.
Daily Mail White House correspondent Jon Michael Raasch also reported that when Zacharia was asked “questions about her legal qualifications after saying she passed the bar exam in China, she responded, “I practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials.”
CNN reporter Kit Maher asked a White House official “to clarify which state Katie Zacharia passed the bar exam” and was told, “Katie moved to China with her husband after graduating because of his job at an American private equity firm while she worked on international transaction law.”
This article has been updated with additional information.
The post Zacharia Insists She Has ‘All the Appropriate Credentials’ to Practice Law — Without Providing Specifics first appeared on Mediaite.
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