Katie Zacharia Is Out as Press Secretary But Her Troubles Aren’t Over

AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

Katie Zacharia’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week is finally coming to a close — but troubles still loom.

Her half-a-Scaramucci tenure as White House Press Secretary sparked a flurry of memes and mockery, but her brief time on the national political stage also shined a spotlight on her inaccurate claims about being a lawyer.

Zacharia did graduate from Pepperdine Law School but was not listed as a member of the bar association in any of the 50 states or the District of Columbia, as reported by Judd Legum at Popular Information. As Mediaite reported, if an attorney is admitted to a bar association and then decides to go voluntarily inactive, or is involuntarily suspended or disbarred from the practice of law, it is standard to still include their name in the bar association’s listings, with the appropriate status designation and any disciplinary history, if relevant.

Her claims about working as a lawyer in China were also inaccurate. China only allows citizens to sit for its exam and she did not meet the qualifications to work as a foreign-licensed attorney there.

Nonetheless, Zacharia described several jobs with legal titles (“associate,” “general counsel”) on her LinkedIn page and repeatedly said during media appearances as a commentator on Fox News and other outlets that she was a “lawyer” and had “practiced law.” Numerous video montages of Zacharia’s past comments claiming to be a lawyer have circulated on social media all week.

To be a licensed attorney requires passing the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE, the ethics exam), your state’s bar exam (consisting of a multistate section and a state-specific section), paying an application fee, and passing a character and fitness background check. After the media reports about her lack of a bar membership, Zacharia admitted that she had taken the MPRE and passed it but had failed the California Bar Exam and had not attempted it again.

Once her apparent résumé misrepresentations came to light, Campaign for Accountability (CfA), a nonprofit watchdog group, filed a complaint with the State Bar of California; a copy 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.

The complaint cited reporting by Legum and Mediaite and argued that it meant that 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.”

After the news broke of Zacharia’s defenestration, CfA sent an email to Mediaite Friday afternoon confirming it still wanted the California Bar to investigate its complaint.

In a statement provided to Mediaite, CfA executive director Michelle Kuppersmith said, “Katie Zacharia getting pushed out as White House Press Secretary is completely immaterial to the fact that she consistently, and apparently falsely, held herself out as a lawyer. This is a crime in California, so we continue to urge the State Bar to investigate and impose any appropriate penalties.”

The specific statute cited by CfA in its complaint letter was 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.”

It should be noted, as we discussed on Dan Abrams’ SiriusXM show earlier, that this provision does not require Zacharia to have signed any contracts to provide legal representation, to have appeared in court, or to have taken any payment to provide legal representation. All that is needed to show a violation is the act of holding herself out to the public as “practicing or entitled to practice law.”

If she does ever decide she wants to try again to officially be a lawyer, this kind of violation of California law would most likely be a major stumbling block for her; some commentators have predicted it would even prevent her from ever being admitted.

Bar associations put the burden of ethical compliance firmly on the aspiring lawyer, and ethical violations that involve deception about law school or the legal profession itself tend to invoke the strictest scrutiny. This complaint has already been forwarded to the California and D.C. bars, and as it made national news, it is likely to be an issue for any state bar where she might decide to apply. She would be ethically obligated to disclose it on her application (and getting busted for not disclosing it would be an all-but-certain death knell for being admitted).

It remains to be seen if Zacharia will actually be prosecuted for this, but she does not seem to have a lot of defenses either. Her use of the title “lawyer” and claims to have “practiced law” were not minimal; they were made on national television and prominent podcasts on numerous occasions over more than a year. And she used the unearned title for her own personal benefit, to bolster her credibility as a commentator and help her get booked on Fox News and other programs, and that helped her get the attention of Trump and those in the president’s inner circle, thus directly leading to her being hired as White House Press Secretary.

That job is now over. Her legal nightmare is not.

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