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A nonprofit watchdog group has filed a complaint with the State Bar of California about White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia’s claims she is an attorney despite apparently never passing a bar exam or being admitted to practice law in any state — citing Mediaite’s reporting in support of a request for an investigation.
Earlier this month Zacharia was announced as the latest MAGA mouthpiece for President Donald Trump’s administration; she kicked off her tenure presiding over the White House Press Briefing Room Tuesday to decidedly brutal reviews.
In addition to the awkwardness of her first press briefing, Zacharia is facing more serious questions about her résumé. She has repeatedly publicly claimed she is a lawyer but there does not seem to be any evidence she passed the bar exam anywhere in the U.S. or another country.
Judd Legum at Popular Information and Scott Nover at The Washington Post both reviewed bar association listings in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and could not find any listing for Zacharia; Mediaite similarly could not find evidence Zacharia had passed a bar exam anywhere she had reportedly lived. (Inactive, suspended, and disbarred attorneys remain listed, with their disciplinary history and current status posted. If she is not listed at all, it means she never passed any bar exam, never took one in the first place, or was rejected because of her background check.)
A job Zacharia had at a law firm in Beijing, China a few months after graduating law school does not plausibly appear to have conveyed any Chinese bar admission (only Chinese citizens can take the Chinese bar exam and she did not meet the requirements for foreign lawyers admitted in another jurisdiction to advise Chinese clients on those outside jurisdictions). There are no reports of her earning a bar admission in any other country.
Still, Zacharia has insisted that she had “practiced international transactional law, with all the appropriate credentials;” a White House official told a reporter she “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.”
As Mediaite previously reported, these apparent misrepresentations could not only create problems if Zacharia does seek to be admitted to a state bar association at some point in the future, they could also result in criminal charges for her. This is a misdemeanor under California’s statute and many other similar state laws, and can potentially incur fines and jail sentences of up to one year.
Campaign for Accountability (CfA), a nonprofit watchdog group, filed a complaint with the State Bar of California on Wednesday and provided a copy to Mediaite. The complaint letter was also sent to the District Attorney for the county where Zacharia resides and to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which investigates and prosecutes complaints of ethical misconduct by lawyers in D.C.
In the complaint, CfA noted multiple occasions on which Zacharia publicly claimed to be an attorney, that she “has for more than a year described herself on national television and in podcasts as a ‘lawyer,’ has claimed to have served as ‘outside counsel’ to the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, and held the title of ‘General Counsel’ of a California-based nonprofit organization,” but according to the reports by Legum and Mediaite, she “has never been admitted to practice law in California or in any other state or the District of Columbia.”
“If that reporting is accurate,” the complaint continued, “Ms. Zacharia has repeatedly held herself out to the public as entitled to practice law without a license to do so, conduct California law treats as a crime.”
The complaint cited Section 6126(a) of the California Business and Professions Code, which states that “[a]ny person advertising or holding himself or herself out as practicing or entitled to practice law or otherwise practicing law who is not an active licensee of the State Bar, or otherwise authorized pursuant to statute or court rule to practice law in this state at the time of doing so, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in a county jail or by a fine of up to one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment.”
Note that despite some misinformation circulating on social media, the California law and others like it do not distinguish between the terms “lawyer” and “attorney;” neither is acceptable for someone who has earned a Juris Doctor degree but not yet passed a bar exam and been admitted to bar. The violation targeted by the statute is holding oneself out to the public as someone who can legally practice law, which requires a bar admission, not just a law school degree, and the common definition of both “lawyer” and “attorney” would fall within this, as does claiming that one “practiced law.”
As CfA’s complaint pointed out, the statutory language in Section 6126(a) “reaches purporting to be a lawyer,” and it is not necessary to determine that someone actually represented a client in order to find a violation. When Zacharia said she was a “lawyer” or mentioned her past work as an “outside counsel” or “general counsel,” those were “representations” that told “an ordinary listener” that she was “a licensed attorney entitled to practice law.”
The complaint added that Zacharia’s representations she is a lawyer “were not isolated,” but rather spanned over a year and were made on multiple major and national media appearances, including being displayed in chyrons while she was on air. “The repetition and breadth of these statements weigh heavily in favor of investigation,” CfA argued.
CfA additionally encouraged the California Bar to investigate if Zacharia had engaged in the unauthorized practice of law, pointing to her claims of serving as “general counsel” to an organization based in California.
Zacharia “has relied on her legal pedigree to give her credibility,” the complaint stated, in both her new role as press secretary and in her previous statements as a legal commentator,” and “[t]he public is entitled to rely on the representation that a person who calls herself a lawyer is in fact licensed to practice law.” California law makes it a crime “for an unlicensed person to hold herself out as entitled to practice,” CfA continued, but the “protection” of those laws “means little if it is not enforced against prominent figures who make such claims to millions of viewers.”
In a statement provided to Mediaite, CfA Executive Director Michelle Kuppersmith said:
Ms. Zacharia has represented herself as a lawyer repeatedly to buttress her reputation and credibility as a television legal commentator and now as the White House spokesperson, yet it seems it was all a lie. In California, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn’t puffery; it’s a crime. The State Bar should investigate whether Ms. Zacharia has misled the public about her credentials and hold her accountable if she has.
The rules against unlicensed lawyering exist to protect the public. To be meaningful, the rules must apply to people with the biggest megaphones, not just to those with no platform.
White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung reacted to reports of CfA’s complaint by bashing the organization but did not address the allegations in it.
“This group that filed the ‘complaint’ is a radical leftist-organization run by rabid numbskulls suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” wrote Cheung. “Nobody takes them seriously because they are deranged low lifes.”
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The post Watchdog Org Files Complaint With California Bar Over Katie Zacharia’s Claims She’s a Lawyer: ‘It’s a Crime’ first appeared on Mediaite.
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