Is Katie Zacharia a lawyer? Watchdog wants California State Bar to confirm
by Mary McCue Bell · The Washington TimesThe newly appointed White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, says she’s a lawyer, and an ethics watchdog is asking the State Bar of California to verify that.
Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint Wednesday with the state bar asking it to investigate whether the Trump administration’s newest spokesperson is violating California law by calling herself a lawyer.
The complaint says if Ms. Zacharia has never been admitted to practice law in any state, she 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.”
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The State Bar of California told CNN it has no record of Kate Sharon Zacharia or Kate Sharon Black, her maiden name, ever being licensed in California, her home state.
Popular Information, an independent news site, searched bar records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and found no evidence that Ms. Zacharia was admitted to practice law.
When asked by reporters Tuesday where she passed the bar exam, Ms. Zacharia said, “When I moved to China.” She later stated that she “practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials.”
President Trump also referred to her as an “attorney” when announcing her appointment.
Ms. Zacharia, a conservative news commentator who made frequent appearances on Fox News, said on television on numerous occasions that she is a lawyer.
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Investigations into attorney registries across major U.S. jurisdictions found no active bar admission or license records for her.
“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,” Campaign for Accountability Executive Director Michelle Kuppersmith said in a statement. “In California, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn’t puffery; it’s a crime.”
Ms. Zacharia earned a law degree from the Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law in 2011, worked as an associate on the international practice team at Beijing’s Zhong Lun Law Firm and held the title of general counsel for conservative nonprofit Fix California, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Legal regulations in China prohibit foreign nationals from taking the national bar exam or holding a formal Chinese lawyer’s license.
“The 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 protects that reliance by making it a crime for an unlicensed person to hold herself out as entitled to practice,” the complaint reads. “That protection means little if it is not enforced against prominent figures who make such claims to millions of viewers.”
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Mary McCue Bell
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