Katie Zacharia told the country she was a lawyer four times this year. She knew she wasn't.
Wall Street Journal reporters wrote at 7:53 a.m. that Trump's press secretary sat the California bar exam in 2011, after law school at Pepperdine, and did not pass. By 11:31 a.m. a senior administration official had confirmed it to NBC: she "did not pass the California bar exam when she took it after graduating from law school." Narativ asked on Oct. 13 whether she had ever passed a bar. The Journal answered this morning, and the White House took less than four hours to agree.
On Feb. 7 she told CNN: "As a lawyer, there's a big difference between answering something under oath and answering something to the media." On Aug. 14, on a podcast: "I'm a lawyer, I went to Pepperdine, Pepperdine Law." On Aug. 31, on Fox & Friends First: "As a lawyer, the procedural steps are absolutely critical." On Oct. 5, to Greg Kelly: "I'm a lawyer." The State Bar of California says it has no record of a Kate Zacharia or a Kate Black ever being licensed, and no state in the country has her on its rolls.
Then she gave three answers in two days. Tuesday on the South Lawn, a reporter asked where she passed the bar. "When I moved to China," she said. Only Chinese citizens can sit the Chinese bar. Then she put out a statement: she had "practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials." Wednesday night she told The New York Times she had misheard the question over the helicopter, and that Pepperdine's president had told her she could call herself a "lawyer" but never an "attorney" or "esquire."
She gave herself away with that last one. A person who asks the president of her law school which word she is allowed to use knows there is a difference. She picked the word anyway, and said it on camera for eight months.
