Katie Zacharia has been fired as White House press secretary, CNN reported Friday, ending her run less than a week after Trump named her to the job.
Trump announced Zacharia as Karoline Leavitt’s replacement on October 9, calling her “a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning.” Leavitt stepped down in August, saying she wanted to spend more time with her young children. Before the White House, Zacharia was a regular commentator on Fox News and Newsmax and had been working since June as a senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social. Earlier this year she spent about two months as a spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security.
Katie Zacharia held her first briefing on Tuesday. It lasted about 14 minutes, and she took just three questions, from Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail. At one point she accidentally referred to Trump as her husband. She did break news, announcing that Trump had asked for Kimberly Guilfoyle’s resignation as U.S. ambassador to Greece.
The bigger problem came right after. Trump had introduced Zacharia as “an attorney” when he announced her hire, and she has described herself as a lawyer for years. But independent journalist Judd Legum of Popular Information reported that he could find no evidence she had ever passed a bar exam, the licensing test a person must pass before they are allowed to practice law. The State Bar of California, where Zacharia lives, said it had no record of her being licensed under her married name or her maiden name, Black. Reviews of bar records in New York, Washington, D.C., Texas and Florida also came up empty.
When reporters outside the White House asked Trump where Katie Zacharia passed the bar, he stepped aside and let her answer. She said she passed it “when I moved to China,” where she worked at a Beijing law firm from 2011 to 2013. That answer only raised more questions, because China does not allow foreign nationals to sit for its bar exam.
On Wednesday, the watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint asking the State Bar of California to investigate whether Zacharia broke state law by presenting herself as a lawyer without a license. The White House did not deny that she never passed the bar. Communications director Steven Cheung instead called her a “fabulous and wonderful addition to the team.”
Zacharia tried to wave off the questions in an interview with Sean Hannity, telling him she was being hired as press secretary, “not White House counsel.” By then, several White House officials were already telling CNN they doubted she would last.
Trump praised her debut briefing as “excellent” on Tuesday. He sounded very different when he was later asked whether he would have liked to know Katie Zacharia didn’t pass the bar.
“Katie has been treated very badly by the media. Very very badly. Very unfair,” Trump said. “I just asked her, is this for you? And she’s a nice person. I’m going to let her make that decision.” He added that Hannity “was a little bit tough” and said he told her, “Honestly, if I were you, I would reconsider. Maybe it’s not for her.”
Her stint ends up even shorter than Anthony Scaramucci’s infamous 11 days as White House communications director in 2017, the comparison critics had been making all week.
