Katie Zacharia, White House press secretary, US President Donald Trump's Executive Assistant Natalie Harp, and Jake Paul stand outside the White House, in Washington, DC, US, October 12, 2026. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon
President Donald Trump's new White House press secretary has an apparent shortfall in her resume.
The 80-year-old president introduced Katie Zacharia as “an attorney," and she has described herself the same way on national TV over and over, but a new investigation by Popular Information's Judd Legum found no evidence that she has ever been admitted to practice law in any state.
The journalist searched bar records in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and turned up no sign that Zacharia holds a law license. She isn’t listed with the State Bar of California, where she lives, or with the bars in Texas and D.C., where she has also worked.
But that hasn’t kept her from using the title.
“I’m a lawyer,” she said on the Greg Kelly Show earlier this month. In August she told a podcast, “I’m a lawyer, I went to Pepperdine, Pepperdine Law.” In a February appearance on CNN, she said, “[A]s a lawyer, there’s a big difference between answering something under oath and answering something to the media.” Fox News has also labeled her a lawyer on screen at least 18 times since March 2025.
Zacharia does have a law degree, but a Juris Doctor alone doesn’t authorize someone to practice law. That requires admission to a state bar, which usually means passing a bar exam.
In California, presenting yourself as entitled to practice law without an active license is a misdemeanor under state law. Zacharia’s LinkedIn says she worked full-time from January 2024 to March 2025 as “General Counsel” for Fix California, a conservative nonprofit founded by Trump ally Ric Grenell. A general counsel is usually an organization’s top lawyer. According to archived versions of her X profile, she kept listing that title, along with “Lawyer,” as recently as July 2026.
Her role at the group also looks smaller on paper. IRS filings show Fix California never paid her a salary, but she received $27,367 in 2024 as a commission for fundraising.
Popular Information also questioned her claims about her work in China after law school. Zacharia has said she served as “outside counsel to the IFC and the World Bank,” a striking claim for a recent graduate. A June 2026 press release from a mining company that appointed her described her role far more modestly, as work on “matters involving organizations associated with” those institutions.
Asked directly whether Zacharia had ever been admitted to any bar, the White House press office didn’t answer the question but instead referred Legum to “the President’s TRUTH on Katie" – which is the post where Trump called her an attorney.