Trump’s New Press Secretary Crumbles Under Slightest Pressure From Fox

White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia crashed and burned Thursday as she struggled to defend pretending to be an actual attorney.

Appearing on Fox News’s Hannity, Zacharia was forced to answer for her train wreck first press briefing. “It’s been widely panned, I’m sure you’re aware. It only lasted 14 minutes. You only took three questions,” host Sean Hannity said.

Zacharia claimed that since being tapped as secretary last week, she’d been given “very little prep time” and had only received the press briefing materials earlier that morning—which is, you know, generally how the news works.

Then Hannity pressed Zacharia to respond to revelations that she lied about being an actual attorney. The former on-air legal analyst had confirmed earlier that day that she never passed the bar exam—just days after she’d told reporters that she had.

“You said you consulted with many people and they advised you that it was okay to call yourself a lawyer but not an attorney, correct?” Hannity asked.

“Correct,” Zacharia said. Hannity pointed to a CNN report that showed 15 social media posts she’d shared in which she was identified as an “attorney.”

“I think they were retweets and I corrected the record and said that [they’re] not endorsing the title, they’re retweets of a title that had been given,” Zacharia stammered. (That doesn’t quite explain why President Donald Trump would then announce that he’d appointed “an attorney” to be his new press secretary.)

“Why not just say, ‘I went to Pepperdine Law School and then took a different career path, and I took the bar once and didn’t pass it?’” Hannity asked. “Why get into this long drawn-out definition between the difference between a lawyer and an attorney, ‘cause I don’t think people see much of a distinction. Why didn’t you just say, ‘I never practiced law?’”

“Well, Sean, when I moved back from the United States I didn’t retake the bar, I had four kids in six years. It was never my intent to go into the practice of law,” Zacharia said.

“When I was at—when I went to go engage in media and give legal analysis, I consulted attorneys and legal professionals as to whether or not they agreed that I could be labeled a lawyer both because I had a valid juris doctor from a good law school, a reputable law school, Pepperdine law school, and in conjunction with the fact that I did have actual, substantive legal experience.”

“I wasn’t providing any legal analysis, Sean—or, I’m, excuse me, legal advice. I wasn’t being paid for legal advice, I was giving a general review of the legal circumstances surrounding it,” she said.

Trump’s new press secretary better get her story straight. At best, Zacharia wildly misrepresented her credentials—at worst, she gave unlicensed legal advice. If she can’t defend her own lies, how in the world will she ever defend Trump’s?

Katie Zacharia’s long résumé includes stints as an unqualified legal commentator, an associate at a Chinese law firm, an uncredentialed general counsel, and—in her own words—a participant in “sort of a pyramid scheme.”

The 41-year-old White House press secretary told Wired Thursday that she used to be an affiliate marketer for Beachbody, a multilevel-marketing operation that sold fitness programs and supplements.

She shared that she was brought into the MLM by a friend and promoted one of the company’s nutrition shakes, labeled Shakeology. She eventually stopped drinking the shakes because of its vitamin A levels, which she told Wired concerned her while she was pregnant.

Beachbody rebranded to BODi in 2023. The company noted to Wired that Zacharia had never worked for them as an employee; she was one of Beachbody’s 300,000 “independent Team Beachbody distributors” in 2013.

A spokesperson for the company also told the magazine that it would be a “misrepresentation” to compare Zacharia’s time at Beachbody with the current iteration of the fitness brand, which has since moved away from the MLM structure in favor of a traditional direct-to-consumer pipeline.

Beachbody was the progenitor of the 90-day P90X workout regimen, an extreme home fitness DVD program that captivated the country when it first hit the market in 2005, and Insanity, another popular home fitness program that launched four years later. Since then, however, Beachbody has been plagued by a number of legal troubles, including lawsuits that accused the company of scamming coaches, lying about the benefits of an anti-aging skincare treatment, and making misleading and unscientific claims about its Shakeology products.

Zacharia, meanwhile, has faced her own mountain of problems this week. Despite her self-advertised legal credentials, it quickly became clear the Pepperdine Caruso Law graduate never actually passed a state bar exam. Zacharia fessed up on Thursday, telling Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec that she was never licensed to practice law anywhere in the country.

“A lot of the misinformation, miscommunication, Jack, is around the fact that I labeled myself ‘lawyer,’ and I consulted for a very long time many people in the field, ‘Is it OK and acceptable if I label myself lawyer? Not attorney at law … and provide legal analysis, not legal advice?’” she said. “They said ‘absolutely’ across the board.”

While some in the legal profession comprehend the semantic differences between the labels, the general public does not. Zacharia was branded as an attorney on Fox News and Newsmax dozens of times. Her P.R. campaign made a fool out of the president, revealing that Donald Trump doesn’t understand the difference, either. Announcing her hire in a statement last week, Trump similarly referred to her as an attorney. The snag: She’s not.

More than 100 letters containing an unknown white substance were mailed to election officials, state officials, and members of Congress, according to three election workers who were briefed on the investigation and spoke to Votebeat.

The FBI acknowledged an investigation into the letters on Thursday, though it did not state how many letters exactly were sent.

Election officers in Oklahoma and Louisiana reported receiving the letters in the mail, while federal officials reportedly intercepted others bound for New Hampshire, Ohio, and Connecticut. The U.S. Postal Service intercepted a letter to Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California, while fellow Democratic Senator Chris Murphy reported receiving a letter in his Hartford, Connecticut, office.

“The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service are investigating a series of suspicious mailings sent to various addresses nationwide, including Secretary of State offices and their related election offices,” the FBI stated. “Some of the letters contained an unknown substance and we are working closely with our law enforcement partners to respond to each incident.”

This comes as state election offices prepare for early voting and the November midterms. It also comes just a few weeks after the twenty-fifth anniversary of the anthrax attacks that followed 9/11, in which infected letters were mailed throughout the country in a similar fashion.

“Election officials should never have to fear for their personal safety while performing their duties, and there is no place in a peaceful democracy for violence, threats or acts of intimidation,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said in a Wednesday statement. “We have a duty to the citizens of Ohio to deliver secure and accessible elections, and these kinds of cowardly threats will not deter us from that mission.”

The mystery of Katie Zacharia’s legal credentials has finally been solved: She doesn’t have any.

The brand-new White House press secretary appeared on the right-wing media outlet Real America’s Voice Thursday for an interview with Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and attempted to put the whole “lawyer” thing to bed.

“A lot of the misinformation, miscommunication, Jack, is around the fact that I labeled myself ‘lawyer,’” Zacharia said. “I consulted for a very long time, many people in the field, ‘Is it OK and acceptable if I label myself ‘lawyer’—not ‘attorney at law,’ not ‘Katie Zacharia esquire’—but ‘lawyer,’ and provide legal analysis, not legal advice. And they said ‘absolutely’ across the board.”

Zacharia obtained her J.D. from Pepperdine University and took the California state bar exam soon after graduation, but she didn’t pass. She told Posobiec that she was distracted, overwhelmed, and excited by her upcoming marriage and plans to join her new husband in China, so the exam was not top-of-mind.

“We just said, ‘Let’s take this time, and I’ll take the bar and see what happens,’” the new press secretary said. “The results are somewhat inconsequential because I knew I wouldn’t need the bar in China, and we left shortly thereafter. After moving to China, I didn’t really think much of the bar results as something I needed to focus on.… There’s no Chinese bar, I had enough credentials, which was my law degree, to be able to do this practice.”

The question of Zacharia’s legal background has perplexed pundits after her bizarre response to reporters at the White House Tuesday asking where she had passed the bar exam, to which she answered: “When I moved to China.” Foreigners can’t take the Chinese bar exam. She later told The New York Times that she had misheard the question.

“The truth is I was very careful how I executed this and I never came across as someone who was an attorney at law,” Zacharia told Posobiec. Never, except when she was repeatedly describing herself as a lawyer and working as “general counsel” for a California nonprofit.

A 19-year-old man tried to carry out a mass shooting at a Hindu temple in Aurora, Illinois, on Sunday while Democratic Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi and his family were inside.

Alexandros Paporakis, 19, was thwarted in his attempt to open fire on the Sri Venkateswara Swami Balaji Temple thanks to his rifle jamming, Krishnamoorthi said in a statement, citing Cook County prosecutors. Paporakis allegedly told his co-workers about what he did and said he planned to try again.

His co-workers contacted police, who arrested him at his home nearby. Investigators later found a manifesto that Paporakis allegedly wrote titled “Why I Fought: A.K.A. (Aurora Shooter’s Manifesto)” showing support for white supremacist ideas, the Chicago Tribune reported. They also found weapons, hundreds of rifle ammunition rounds, body armor, a patch with a white supremacist picture on it, and tactical equipment.

“I am horrified that a white supremacist attempted to carry out a mass shooting targeting Indian Americans at the Hindu temple in Aurora where my family worships,” Krishnamoorthi said in his statement.

Racism against South Asians has ramped up in recent months, spurred on by right-wing politicians and media. Bo French, the Republican nominee to lead the Texas Railroad Commission, made a racist X post attacking a picture of several South Asian students at a University of Texas football game.

“The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” French posted.

The picture quickly became conservative fodder. It was the topic of discussion on a September 26 episode of the right-wing podcast Rufo & Lomez, hosted by right-wing ideologues Christopher Rufo (famous for pushing attacks on critical race theory and DEI) and Jonathan Keeperman. The pair discussed what they called the “Indian Question” and defended French’s post, making the racist claim that the Texas students had not properly “assimilated” into American culture.

Krishnamoorthi criticized the episode in an X post, saying that “Indian Americans are not an ‘Indian Question’ to be solved.”

“Treating any American community as a problem because of their ethnicity is racist, xenophobic, and fundamentally un-American. We are a nation born of ideals, not bloodlines. No race, religion, or ancestry has a greater claim to America than another. Indian Americans are as American as anyone. This country belongs to all of us,” Krishnamoorthi posted.

Meanwhile, Rufo and Keeperman’s ideas are being amplified by their fellow travelers in the Trump administration, who turn a blind eye to incidents like the one in Aurora.