Katie Zacharia’s first week on the job was rough.
Her first briefing as the new White House press secretary lasted about 14 minutes, and she answered three questions. Then came the scrutiny of her legal career.
During an appearance Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” show — which is notoriously friendly territory for the Trump administration — Zakaria said she had “done the best” in her debut and addressed criticism of her legal career.
“My feeling is, Sean, I really started the press conference with very little preparation time,” Zakaria told host Sean Hannity.
Zakaria said she worked “probably less than eight hours” and did not receive the briefing materials until Tuesday morning, the day of the press conference.
She also responded to criticism that she only took questions from conservative media, saying she had called the Daily Mail and “it is understood that the newspaper is not a conservative media and is not friendly to conservatives.”
Zakaria said she “probably should have stepped aside” after introducing herself instead of answering questions.
Hannity then asked Zachariah about her legal background.
She confirmed that she had taken the bar exam but failed and did not retake it.
Zakaria said she graduated from Pepperdine University the same week she got married and planned to move to China. However, she has already signed up for the exam.
“The outcome of the bar didn’t matter, I joined it because I didn’t want to quit,” she said.
In China, she said, she found a job “in the international practice of a Chinese law firm” where she was “responsible for cross-border transactions and multi-million dollar shareholder agreements.”
Zakaria also confirmed that she consulted legal professionals and asked if she could call herself a lawyer because she had a “valid J.D. from an excellent law school.”
Hannity then pointed to a CNN report on Thursday about how she shared several social media posts in which she said she was a lawyer.
“I thought they were retweets, and I corrected the record and said they were not endorsements of the headlines. They were retweets of the headlines that had been given,” Zakaria said.
A review of her legal background
Questions about Zacharias’ legal qualifications have grown over the past week.
She graduated from Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law in 2011, but Substack publication Popular Information reported Tuesday that she has not yet been admitted to any state bar.
Two watchdog groups filed a complaint with the State Bar of California on Wednesday, calling on it to investigate whether Zakaria violated state law by calling herself an attorney.
Her experience working in China also drew attention to her legal qualifications.
Chinese legal experts told Business Insider that only Chinese citizens can take the country’s bar exam. Foreign staff at international law firms can work on certain transactions without a pass, but their role is limited.
“She has never been a lawyer in China. That doesn’t mean she hasn’t been involved in law-related work, but she has never been a lawyer in China,” Jacques Dreyer, a professor at Penn Law School who studies the Chinese legal system, told Business Insider.