A watchdog group’s complaint to California’s state bar raised the possibility of prosecuting President Donald Trump’s new press secretary for repeatedly telling the public, “I’m a lawyer.”
Campaign for Accountability, a nonpartisan watchdog, filed the complaint Wednesday and asked the State Bar of California to investigate White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia. The group pointed to published reporting that Zacharia has never been licensed to practice law anywhere in the United States.
“In California, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn’t puffery; it’s a crime,” Michelle Kuppersmith, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
Under California law, anyone without an active state bar license who presents themselves as entitled to practice law commits a misdemeanor, a lower-level crime punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, the group said.
The complaint asks the bar to “take all appropriate action, including referral to the Ventura County District Attorney or other appropriate prosecuting authorities.” According to the group, Zacharia owns a home in Ventura County.
The complaint relies on reporting by the independent newsletter Popular Information, which said Tuesday it searched attorney licensing records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and found no record of Zacharia ever being admitted to practice law.
Zacharia earned a law degree from Pepperdine University in 2011, but the outlet reported that a degree alone does not authorize someone to practice law.
“If that reporting is accurate, 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 states.
“While residing in California, she has repeatedly told the public, without qualification, ‘I’m a lawyer,’ and has invoked that status to lend authority to her commentary on legal procedure,” the complaint says.
“[A]s a lawyer, the procedural steps are absolutely critical,” Zacharia said on Fox & Friends First in August, in one of several such statements Popular Information documented.
“These representations were not isolated. They span at least February 2025 through October 2026, were made across multiple national outlets available to California audiences and were reinforced by on-screen identifications in at least 18 television appearances. The repetition and breadth of these statements weigh heavily in favor of investigation,” the complaint argues.
When Popular Information asked whether Zacharia had been admitted to any bar, the White House pointed only to Trump’s social media post calling her “an attorney,” the outlet reported.
“When I moved to China,” Zacharia said Tuesday after New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh asked Trump on the White House’s South Lawn where she had passed the bar exam and Trump turned to her, according to Popular Information.
The watchdog group said China does not allow foreign nationals to take its bar exam, and a foreign license would not authorize her to practice law in California.
“I practiced international transactional law, with all the appropriate credentials,” Zacharia later told Politico’s Dasha Burns, who posted the remark on X.
The complaint also asks the bar to determine whether Zacharia practiced law without a license, a separate violation, while she listed herself as general counsel or top lawyer for Fix California, a California nonprofit, from January 2024 to March 2025.
“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,” Kuppersmith said.