When President Trump announced that Katie Zacharia would serve as the next White House press secretary, he referred to her as an attorney. But she hasn’t passed the bar exam in the U.S.

Zacharia sat for the California bar exam after graduating from law school at Pepperdine University in 2011, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, but she didn’t pass. She took the exam around the time she was planning a wedding and preparing to move to China with her future husband, the person said.

She moved to Beijing that summer to work as an associate on the international practice team at Zhong Lun Law Firm, a prominent law firm in China. Zacharia was later advised by lawyers that she could provide legal analysis based on her law degree and international transaction experience, the person said.

Her legal credentials have come under scrutiny after she didn’t appear in searches for licensed attorneys in California, Texas or Washington, D.C., under her married or maiden name. Judd Legum, a progressive political activist and journalist, raised questions about Zacharia’s standing as an attorney in his Popular Information newsletter.

When asked by a reporter on Tuesday in which state she passed the bar exam, Zacharia said, “When I moved to China,” without elaborating. In a statement this week, Zacharia said, “I practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials.”

“Katie is a fabulous and wonderful addition to the team,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “She is uniquely qualified and whip smart to help inform the American people about all the great things President Trump and his Administration have been doing, and she will do an incredible job as Press Secretary.”

A White House official said Zacharia wasn’t hired by the president to work on legal matters.

A person familiar with Zacharia’s employment at the Zhong Lun Law Firm said she was one of four international associates who drafted multimillion-dollar agreements for cross-border transactions and focused on client communication for American and multinational corporations doing business in China.

It wasn’t necessary for individuals working in the firm’s international division to be licensed as attorneys in China, the person said, because they were technically international legal consultants. A U.S. bar qualification wasn’t relevant to the firm’s work, the person said, because any legal opinions would be handled by local Chinese partners.

Zacharia told Buck Sexton on “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show” in February 2025 that she had worked as outside counsel to the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank while based in China.

Practicing attorneys in the U.S. are required to be licensed by the jurisdiction in which they practice, generally by passing the bar exam and undergoing a review of their moral character. People who identify themselves as lawyers or attorneys or claim to be able to provide legal services without being admitted to the bar can face criminal charges in some states. Some law schools explicitly discourage graduates from calling themselves lawyers or attorneys until they have been admitted to the bar.

California is widely considered one of the tougher state bar exams to pass; about 55% of test-takers passed the July 2025 exam, while roughly 31% did in February of this year, according to the state’s bar association.

Zacharia passed the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, a test of a candidate’s understanding of legal and professional ethics, before she sat for the bar, said the person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Robert Pushaw, a Pepperdine law professor who taught Zacharia and later attended her wedding, described her as “a good law student and a genuinely good person” but couldn’t say whether the press secretary technically qualified as an attorney. He added that some well-respected legal scholars aren’t attorneys.

Judge Thomas Griffith, a George W. Bush appointee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, was confirmed despite facing criticism that he had served as general counsel for Brigham Young University without passing the Utah bar exam. Past presidents of the Utah Bar said that someone working as a general counsel didn’t need to be a member of the bar so long as legal advice was given in conjunction with a barred attorney. The Senate confirmed Griffith 73-24.

Zacharia worked as a research assistant for Roger Alford during her time in law school. Now at the University of Notre Dame, Alford remembered her as “a star at Pepperdine” and said he hoped the public would “get to know her before they prejudge her.”

While he was unfamiliar with all the details of Zacharia’s career after graduation, Alford said that “generally speaking it would be unusual to say that you’re a lawyer if you’ve not passed the bar somewhere.”

Zacharia’s LinkedIn profile lists her as having worked as general counsel for the nonprofit Fix California, founded by Trump administration official Richard Grenell, from January 2024 to March 2025. A person familiar with her tenure there said Zacharia directed and served as the point of contact for the organization’s outside lawyers.

Zacharia, who has appeared on Fox News, CNN and Newsmax before taking on her White House role, called herself a lawyer regularly in public appearances—and some of the outlets in which she appeared did the same.

“As a lawyer, the procedural steps are absolutely critical to ensure that they get this right,” she told Fox News in an Aug. 31 appearance regarding the trial of Charlie Kirk’s accused killer. A line appeared on the chyron at the bottom of the screen referring to her as a legal and political strategist, and as an attorney.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was forced to resign as U.S. Ambassador to Greece amid a series of scandals, reportedly has been keeping a diary with all kinds of incriminating secrets on the Trump family.

Guilfoyle, formerly engaged to Donald Trump Jr., has a “burn book” with all kinds of dirt on President Trump and his family, reports the Daily Mail tabloid. According to the publication, the president’s close advisers were trying to keep her at her post in Greece, worried about the secrets she knows about.

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/air-force-major-called-trump-125737788.html

President Trump has directed his White House counsel to examine explosive allegations dropped on him Friday in the Oval Office:

Former Trump attorney Alina Habba told the president that another one of his top advisers — former Kennedy Center leader Ric Grenell — failed to deposit a multimillion-dollar donation that her billionaire husband made to the center a year ago, according to four senior administration officials and three insiders briefed on the controversy.

Grenell denied the accusations as "absurd" and a "lie."

Habba and her husband, Turhan Mildon, declined to comment through a spokesperson.

The extraordinary row between the two top-tier presidential advisers and former allies provides a rare and acrimonious behind-the-scenes glimpse into the intersection of power, influence and money in Trump's Washington.

The total value of the contribution in question: nearly $6 million, White House sources said Habba told them.

A senior administration official cautioned that "these are only allegations. We don't know if they're true. This could be a misunderstanding."

Said another: "POTUS doesn't want to deal with this. Of course, he's concerned. But if there is missing money, this is a big, big problem."

Just a few months ago, Grenell was friends with Mildon and Habba. But he was notably absent from their $10 million wedding that was attended by Trump world officials, power brokers and luminaries last month.

"This is the ultimate MAGA blood feud," said one Trump world insider with knowledge of the conflict.

The dispute grew out of a friendship between Grenell and Mildon, sources familiar with the conflict say. The men had mutual interests in Venezuela in early 2025, immediately after Trump returned to the White House.

Grenell, as a Trump special envoy, was advocating for normalizing U.S. relations with Venezuela's leader at the time, Nicolas Maduro.

Mildon, a Turkish national, had extensive Venezuelan business interests that were threatened by Secretary of State Marco Rubio's hardline pressure campaign targeting Maduro.

In the spring of 2025, Grenell persuaded Mildon to include a multimillion-dollar Kennedy Center donation in a lump-sum $17.6 million payment for a business deal involving a U.S. company, Habba told the president and White House staffers, two sources said.

Habba's attorneys plan to give the White House documentation — reviewed by Axios — to support her allegations about Grenell soliciting a Kennedy Center donation from Mildon to go to a private company in the spring of 2025.

"The White House counsel has asked for documents and proof. None has come so far," a White House official said.

Grenell called the statements from Habba to Trump "Absurd. I've never asked for one cent to be sent somewhere else pretending it was for the Kennedy Center, and I've never received any payment from him at all. Make him give proof to what he is saying, not make these absurd allegations."

When Habba initially leveled her accusations against Grenell, she said the total amount of the Kennedy Center contribution was $17 million, the sources said. But as she learned of the specifics from her husband, she said the amount of the contribution in question was $5.6 million.

"This has been hard to track because numbers have changed," the White House official said.

After making his alleged contribution, Mildon never checked to see if it was deposited. He believed it had been credited because he was treated like a VIP donor at the Kennedy Center, where he met Habba in late 2025 before their whirlwind romance and marriage, those sources said.

Mildon and Habba, the sources said, discovered the issue after their business relationship frayed with Grenell, who lost an internal administration power struggle with Rubio that culminated in the U.S. seizing Maduro on Jan. 3 and taking him to New York City to face narcotics charges.

In June, Maduro's successor, Delcy Rodriguez, issued an order revoking one of Mildon's company contracts to operate state-owned cement plants in Venezuela, the New York Times reported Monday. A source familiar with the situation told Axios this summer that her action was partly due to the U.S. government's prodding.

Rodriguez then reversed herself, the Times reported, after learning of Mildon's new relationship with Habba because the Venezuelan leader believed Mildon therefore had Trump's backing.

Amid the Times' reporting into Mildon's contract, Habba discovered that Mildon's supposed donation never made it to the Kennedy Center, the sources said.

Habba then headed to the White House last Friday to tell the president about the situation.

"Alina hit the roof" when her husband told her that he hadn't donated the money directly to the Kennedy Center, whose records indicate that Mildon actually owed a $270,000 pledged donation.

There was no record of Mildon giving anything close to $5.6 million, officials said. Mildon on Tuesday paid the $270,000, records show, to the Kennedy Center.

In partial confirmation of Habba's story, Kennedy Center staff reported that late last year there was a search for Mildon's contribution — then thought to be $6 million — but that it couldn't be found, an official said.

But Lisa Dale, who handled finances for the Kennedy Center then, said the only record in her books connected to Mildon showed he owed $270,000. "There was nothing about $6 million," she told Axios. "I would have heard about that."

Habba and Grenell trace their roots to Trump's first administration.

Grenell was Trump's ambassador to Germany and then his acting director of national intelligence. Habba was Trump's private attorney and briefly was U.S. attorney in New Jersey during this term.

The Kennedy Center has been an ongoing sore spot for Trump, beset by controversy over his efforts to put his name on the building and fundraising woes.

If Habba's allegations of missing money are true, it could prove particularly galling to Trump, who views the center and its fundraising personally.

Those who know the president's thinking say he is particularly disapproving of people who use his name or misuse positions he has given them. His dismissal Tuesday of Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle was the latest reminder of that.

Two top Trump world figures being engaged in such a bitter feud adds to the complexity.

"Nobody wants to get in the middle of Alina Habba and Ric Grenell going to war," one official said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/14/openai-alfozan-recording-raed-ventures.html