Last Wednesday, 7 October, a White House official called Zacharia and asked her to travel from Los Angeles, where she lives with her family, to Washington for a meeting. (She declined to specify who made the call.)<\/p>\n
Zacharia made the trip the following day, before meeting officials on Pennsylvania Avenue on Friday. She was offered the job later that day \u2013 and accepted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI flew home, packed two bags, said hi to my kids and husband and dogs,\u201d Zacharia said, before returning to Washington on Sunday ahead of her first day on Monday.<\/p>\n
But her first briefing, which Zacharia said she was \u201casked to do\u201d on her second day in the job, was criticized as lackluster.<\/p>\n
And she has since faced intense scrutiny over her claimed legal qualifications. After her debut briefing on Tuesday, reporters asked Zacharia to name the state where she passed the bar exam. \u201cWhen I moved to China\u201d, she replied.<\/p>\n
She later told the New York Times <\/a>she had \u201cmisheard\u201d the question over the sound of Marine One on the South Lawn and thought the reporter had asked: \u201cWhere were you after law school?\u201d However, she did not confirm to the Times whether she had passed the bar exam. According to her LinkedIn profile, after graduating from Pepperdine University\u2019s law school in 2011, Zacharia was an \u201cassociate\u201d at the Beijing law firm Zhong Lun from 2011 to 2013.<\/p>\n This week, the Wall Street Journal reported<\/a>, citing a person familiar with the matter, that Zacharia failed the California bar exam after graduating from law school.<\/p>\n The State Bar of California told the Guardian it had no record of Zacharia being licensed in the state under either her married name or her maiden name, Katie Black. While Trump has referred to Zacharia as an \u201cattorney\u201d, that title is reserved for those licensed to practice law.<\/p>\n In a different interview<\/a> with the conservative outlet Human Events on Thursday, Zacharia acknowledged to the rightwing influencer Jack Posobiec that she didn\u2019t pass the California bar. At the time, she said she was \u201cdistracted and overwhelmed and excited\u201d to join her new husband in China, where he was working, after being in a long-distance relationship for more than a year.<\/p>\n A person familiar with the matter said Zacharia \u201cstands by\u201d referring to herself as a lawyer, and that she considered the designation a \u201cvalid title\u201d, given her law degree and \u201cinternational transactional law experience\u201d. She did so after \u201cconsulting with other legal professionals and attorneys\u201d about whether it was an appropriate designation, the source claimed, adding that Zacharia had \u201cnever given legal advice\u201d; just \u201clegal analysis\u201d.<\/p>\n However, many legal experts note that \u201clawyer\u201d and \u201cattorney\u201d are often used interchangeably. On Wednesday, the Campaign for Accountability<\/a>, a non-profit watchdog organization, asked the State Bar of California to investigate whether Zacharia misled the public, and potentially violated state law, by describing herself as a lawyer.<\/p>\n
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