White House press secretary Katie Zacharia said Thursday night on Fox News that her failure on the 2011 California bar exam was of little consequence because she was preparing to move to China.
Host Sean Hannity asked repeatedly whether she had sat for the test a second or third time. Zacharia answered, “I did not.” She said she had married the week she finished at Pepperdine and expected to relocate to China, so an exam for which she had already registered mattered little.
Zacharia said she took the test anyway to avoid having a withdrawal on her record. After the move, she said, she worked in international practice at a Chinese law firm.
Hannity pressed her on calling herself a lawyer but not an attorney and on social media posts in which she identified as an attorney. Zacharia described those posts as retweets and said she had corrected the record without endorsing the title. She said she did not retake the exam after returning to the United States because she had four children in six years and did not plan to practice law, adding that she had consulted attorneys and legal professionals before describing herself as a lawyer based on her Pepperdine degree and legal experience.