White House press secretary Katie Zacharia 'let go' from role, official says

Legal credentials called into question after Katie gave an inconclusive answer about where she had passed the bar exam

White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia was "let go" ​from the role, a White House official said ‌on Friday, after President Donald Trump said he had told her to reconsider the job following public scrutiny.

"I told her: 'I think ​you're better off being happy, and I'm not ​sure you can ever be happy in this ⁠stuff.' There's nothing easy about this stuff," Trump told reporters while departing the White House.

He added: "I said to her ​honestly, 'If I were you, I'd reconsider... think about it. But I would reconsider.'"

Fox News, citing a White House official, later reported that ​Katie was "transitioning" out of the role of press ​secretary. Katie started the job on Monday and held her debut White House briefing ‌on ⁠Tuesday.

Read: Trump's new spokesperson stumbles into controversy

She had said she received a call about the role of press secretary last Wednesday and got offered the job to succeed Karoline Leavitt last Friday.

Trump later announced her appointment. ​In his ​announcement, he described ⁠her as an attorney.

Over the last week, the issue of whether Katie had actually ​passed ⁠the bar came under fire.

Earlier in the day, Katie acknowledged that she had failed the bar exam, a prerequisite for practising law in the United States, as her credentials faced scrutiny.

Katie had previously described herself as a lawyer during television appearances and on social media, and listed herself as general counsel of a California-based conservative nonprofit.

But the legal credentials of the press secretary, who President Donald Trump appointed last week, were called into question after she gave an inconclusive answer about where she had passed the bar exam.

The 41-year-old graduated from Pepperdine University's law school in 2011, but obtaining a law degree does not automatically qualify someone to practice law.

In a Fox News interview on Thursday, host Sean Hannity asked Katie: "You took the bar exam, but you didn't pass the bar exam, correct?"

"Yes," she responded.

In a separate interview with conservative media outlet Real America's Voice on Thursday, Katie said she had registered to take the bar exam but was "distracted and overwhelmed" by plans to move to China with her husband.

"The results are somewhat inconsequential because I knew I wouldn't need the bar in China," she said.

Foreign nationals cannot sit China's bar exam, although they can undertake certain legal work at Chinese law firms.

Hannity later asked Katie if she had ever taken the bar exam a second time, to which she said: "I did not."

Katie Zacharia says she never retook the bar exam, but maintains she had a legitimate basis for calling herself a lawyer during television appearances.

The Pepperdine Law graduate tells @seanhannity she consulted attorneys before using the title, citing her law degree and… pic.twitter.com/eweV6pwPpg

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 16, 2026

"I had four kids in six years," she said. "It was never my intent to go into the practice of law."

Katie said on Real America's Voice that "many people in the field" had assured her that she could "label myself a lawyer," given her law degree and experience in business law gained in China, where she worked at a Beijing law firm.

She added that she could "provide legal analysis, not legal advice."

"I was very careful how I executed this."

The Campaign for Accountability, a political ethics organisation, called on Wednesday for the California Bar Association to launch an investigation.

Read More: White House defends Press Secretary Katie Zacharia amid questions over legal credentials

"In California, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn't puffery; it's a crime," the organisation said in a press release.

Katie held her first White House press briefing on Tuesday with an unusually short press conference, answering questions from only three journalists.

She succeeded Karoline Leavitt, a loyal Trump supporter and often combative press secretary, who stepped down in August to care for her young children.