Katie Zacharia’s stint as White House Press Secretary ended so quickly Anthony Scaramucci even had to weigh in.
The former pundit’s tenure fell apart almost instantly, after the media asked where she’d passed the bar exam and she answered “China.” Given that China doesn’t let foreign nationals take their version of the exam, this prompted Judd Legum to do some sleuthing and discover that Zacharia has never been licensed in the United States. During the ensuing fire drill, it came out that Zacharia took the California exam and failed — and just kind of went ahead as though she hadn’t. Her defenders put out the fact that she had passed the MPRE, which… I mean…
Ultimately, all these attempts at damage control failed to save her job.
But you have to hand it to social media conservatives for launching a half-baked round of “whataboutism” to save face. Unfortunately, like all these efforts, it fizzled because they failed to understand the actual issue.
On “The Alex Marlow Show,” host and Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow talked about the White House.
Marlow said, “Overall, the thought that failing a bar disqualifies you from holding a public office…this is going to disqualify Kamala Harris, who failed the bar her first time.”
Marlow wasn’t alone, right-wing social media cherry-picked over every bit of bar exam lore to flag every famous Democrat from Hillary Clinton to FDR as having failed the bar exam. Which is fair enough, except the problem for Zacharia was never “that she failed the bar exam” — as we noted last week, the bar exam is a stupid, anachronistic hazing ritual that should be excised from modern professional licensing. The problem, as spelled out succinctly in the Campaign for Accountability’s ethics complaint against Zacharia already filed in California, was not having a license and still spending her career claiming to be a lawyer, up-to-and-including describing herself on LinkedIn as “general counsel” for a non-profit.
The comparison to the likes of Hillary and Roosevelt flops for a lot of reasons. Honestly, the fact that those people all went back and passed the exam isn’t even the most glaring problem with the comparison. It just completely misses the point because failing the bar exam doesn’t matter here. There’s nothing wrong with failing the bar exam, and there’s nothing wrong with going on to have a career in government or academia or as a right-wing mouthpiece without having a law license. The White House Press Secretary doesn’t need to be a lawyer. Hell, being the DOJ spokesperson wouldn’t even require an active law license! The problem is that she built a professional resume claiming to do work that she never had the license to perform, and — when called out on it — the administration dug the hole deeper.
Trust that if Kamala Harris ever claimed to be the general counsel of a California non-profit without a law license, we’d be the first to join in the criticism.
Anyway, Zacharia has lost the White House job. If she wants, she can go back to cable news punditry. She just can’t go back to being in-house counsel.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
The post ‘Hillary Clinton & Kamala Harris Also Failed The Bar Exam!’ Note GOPers Faceplanting Zacharia Defense appeared first on Above the Law.
Katie Zacharia’s stint as White House Press Secretary ended so quickly Anthony Scaramucci even had to weigh in.
The former pundit’s tenure fell apart almost instantly, after the media asked where she’d passed the bar exam and she answered “China.” Given that China doesn’t let foreign nationals take their version of the exam, this prompted Judd Legum to do some sleuthing and discover that Zacharia has never been licensed in the United States. During the ensuing fire drill, it came out that Zacharia took the California exam and failed — and just kind of went ahead as though she hadn’t. Her defenders put out the fact that she had passed the MPRE, which… I mean…
Ultimately, all these attempts at damage control failed to save her job.
But you have to hand it to social media conservatives for launching a half-baked round of “whataboutism” to save face. Unfortunately, like all these efforts, it fizzled because they failed to understand the actual issue.
On “The Alex Marlow Show,” host and Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow talked about the White House.
Marlow said, “Overall, the thought that failing a bar disqualifies you from holding a public office…this is going to disqualify Kamala Harris, who failed the bar her first time.”
Marlow wasn’t alone, right-wing social media cherry-picked over every bit of bar exam lore to flag every famous Democrat from Hillary Clinton to FDR as having failed the bar exam. Which is fair enough, except the problem for Zacharia was never “that she failed the bar exam” — as we noted last week, the bar exam is a stupid, anachronistic hazing ritual that should be excised from modern professional licensing. The problem, as spelled out succinctly in the Campaign for Accountability’s ethics complaint against Zacharia already filed in California, was not having a license and still spending her career claiming to be a lawyer, up-to-and-including describing herself on LinkedIn as “general counsel” for a non-profit.
The comparison to the likes of Hillary and Roosevelt flops for a lot of reasons. Honestly, the fact that those people all went back and passed the exam isn’t even the most glaring problem with the comparison. It just completely misses the point because failing the bar exam doesn’t matter here. There’s nothing wrong with failing the bar exam, and there’s nothing wrong with going on to have a career in government or academia or as a right-wing mouthpiece without having a law license. The White House Press Secretary doesn’t need to be a lawyer. Hell, being the DOJ spokesperson wouldn’t even require an active law license! The problem is that she built a professional resume claiming to do work that she never had the license to perform, and — when called out on it — the administration dug the hole deeper.
Trust that if Kamala Harris ever claimed to be the general counsel of a California non-profit without a law license, we’d be the first to join in the criticism.
Anyway, Zacharia has lost the White House job. If she wants, she can go back to cable news punditry. She just can’t go back to being in-house counsel.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
The post ‘Hillary Clinton & Kamala Harris Also Failed The Bar Exam!’ Note GOPers Faceplanting Zacharia Defense appeared first on Above the Law.
