{"id":305496,"date":"2026-10-16T10:17:35","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T06:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/?p=305496"},"modified":"2026-10-16T11:12:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T07:12:28","slug":"white-house-new-press-secretary-admits-she-failed-the-bar-exam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/news\/305496\/","title":{"rendered":"White House new Press Secretary admits she failed the bar exam"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body><p>White House new Press Secretary Katie Zacharia has admitted that she failed the bar exam. Her legal career prior to taking office as US President Donald Trump&rsquo;s chief spokesperson has come under intense public scrutiny, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/russian\/articles\/cm62y8r686y1o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BBC<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n<p>Zacharia, who started her job at the White House on Monday, previously claimed that she had practiced law before entering politics. Trump also introduced her as a lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>In the United States, law school graduates are not permitted to practice law until they are admitted to the bar in a specific state.<\/p>\n<p>During her first briefing on October 13, in response to a journalist&rsquo;s question about which state she had passed the bar exam in, Zacharia stated in Trump&rsquo;s presence: &ldquo;When I moved to China.&rdquo; In a later press statement, Zacharia said she had &ldquo;practiced international transactional law with all the necessary qualifications.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The White House did not specify whether she had passed the bar exam in any US state or other jurisdiction.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Zacharia admitted in an interview with Fox News that she had not passed the exam.<\/p>\n<p>After graduating, she moved to China, where she worked as a lawyer at a Chinese law firm.<\/p>\n<p>Zacharia held her first briefing on October 13, which many journalists deemed a failure. The performance lasted about 15 minutes and consisted mostly of listing Trump&rsquo;s achievements.<\/p>\n<p>During her opening remarks, she barely took her eyes off her prepared notes and generally sounded unconvincing.<\/p>\n<p>After the performance, Trump said he thought &ldquo;she did very well.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>In her Fox News interview, Zacharia said she had very little time to prepare, but felt she had handled the task.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>White House new Press Secretary Katie Zacharia has admitted that she failed the bar exam. Her legal career prior to taking office as US President Donald Trump&rsquo;s chief spokesperson has come under intense public scrutiny, BBC reports. Zacharia, who started her job at the White House on Monday, previously claimed that she had practiced law [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":305456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,35,43,47,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-world","category-society","category-law"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":305497,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305496\/revisions\/305497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}