Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump New Press Sec Suddenly Under Criminal Scrutiny

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

In breaking news, the first (of many) bar complaints have been filed against Trump’s 24-hour press secretary Katie Zacharia, not for the crime against humanity that was her first press conference, but potential crimes in violation of California law for practicing law without a license and holding herself out to be a licensed lawyer when she wasn’t. Popok is on the case with his latest hot take. Select Quote: Get the right life insurance for you for less at https://SelectQuote.com/legalaf today! Pre-order the new book from MeidasTouch, WTF America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy, today: https://bit.ly/wtfamericayoutube Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts:  https://meidasnews.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did Donald Trump's new press secretary commit a crime? No, I'm not talking about her 14-minute performance at the podium. I mean, by holding yourself out to be a licensed attorney when she's not. We have a word for that in my profession. It's called the unlicensed practice of law. It is a crime, and now there is a new bar complaint, a new request to open an investigation sent by the campaign for accountability to the Office of Chief Trial Counsel for the State Bar of California. because the question that needs to be answered is did Katie Zacharia violate California

Business and Professional Code Section 6125 and 6126? Because she held herself out to the public as being a practicing lawyer. And this is not ethereal. This is not conjecture and speculative. If you go, it's probably down now. But if you go to Katie Zacharias Zacharias, is LinkedIn, she's listed as a general counsel for a not-for-profit run by somebody in Trump world, Rick Grinnell.

And if she held herself out and is holding herself out as a general counsel, that implies to the public that she is licensed to practice law. But she had to admit that she's not licensed to practice law. I mean, popular information on Substack went through all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, to determine that there is no Katie Zechorea or anything. like it, admitted to practice law anywhere. She confessed to that in front of what appeared to me to be a pretty shocked Donald Trump after her press conference. That now led, as I expected, as I anticipated, to a bar complaint. I'm going to have the Attorney General for California, Rob Bonta, on with me

tomorrow, and one of my questions is going to be, is this a crime and is California opening up a criminal investigation. I'm Michael Popock, you're on the Midas Touch Network. Let's get to Katie Zacharia. A lot of jokes about her. A lot of attempts by the Trump administration and MAGA to try to defend what was a failed, disastrous press conference, 14 minutes in lengths, nine minutes of her babbling, twirling her hair, and having a nervous tick, and then five minutes of trying to answer questions

really unsuccessfully. But I said at the top of this hot take, that's not. the crime. The crime is she's been appearing for the last 10 years on right-wing media and identifying herself as a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. Let me answer that question for you in order to shore up her her meager credentials and give herself some bona fides. Now, she is, I mean, at least as of today, a legitimate graduate of Pepperdine Law School in California. That does not give her the right to call herself a lawyer. You can say I went to law school. You can say I graduated law school. You can say when I was a law student, but you can't say, I'm a lawyer, Bill. I'm a lawyer, right-wing podcaster

when you're not. Here's a clip of her doing exactly that. Hi, I'm Jeff Stor Rabinsky, and in front of us today, we have Katie Zacharia, who is a Republican political strategist, who you might see on almost every cable network from CNN to Fox News to OAN to Newsmax. She's also an attorney, and formerly she was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and spokesperson at DHS. Welcome, Katie. Thank you so much for having me on. Katie, you were also appointed in 2026 this year as Senior Communications Advisor at Trump Media and Technology Group, which encompasses, of course, truth, social. But before we get into that, there's a vacancy now at the White House for press secretary. Would you take that?

Well, I first want to start and just say that I as a mother, is my first job. A mother of four kids is 11-year-old boy, 10-year-old girl, 8-year-old boy, and now a 5-year-old boy. We're going to jump to the evens here pretty quickly. My daughter's 10th birthday was just a few days ago. Happy birthday, thank you so much. And what I was reminded of before any notice of the great... Press Secretary Caroline Levitt resigning was 10 years ago I was reflecting on a photo of my daughter and I and my son, who was just a little bit older than her at the hospital when she was born.

And there is no greater call for a mother to be home with her kids. And it feels often, I'm a lawyer. I went to Pepperdine, Pepperdine Law. I practiced corporate law in Beijing, China. Now, multiply that by 18 times. So when I was doing my research about Zacharia, I was like, what's interesting. She's a lawyer. I wonder where she practiced. Nowhere.

I went on her LinkedIn. Let's put up a shot. And as of yesterday, it said that she was a general counsel for Rick Grinnell, who's a special envoy for Donald Trump, also as friends with the tape brothers, for a not-for-profit in California. So she was practicing law in California. I was a deputy general counsel. I know you have to have an active law license in order to perform your duties. So when they asked her after the press conference, and they asked Donald Trump, where is she admitted?

What state is she a member of the bar? Just to think about this for a minute. This would be like somebody graduating medical school, not passing the boards, not becoming licensed, and practicing medicine. That's a crime. Same thing here in my profession, in law. Let me play the clip of a, what looks to me as a shock Donald Trump in the future. If Donald Trump in his 90s ever gives interviews, this may be the moment when he decides to fire her in this answer. Because she decides I'm going to cover up for not being a licensed lawyer by saying I'm a Chinese lawyer, which is one bad as a U.S. Press Secretary to say that the Chinese Communist Party let you into the Chinese bar.

But two, it's also a second lie. Play the clip. Where did she pass the bar exam in? He said she's an attorney. Where did she pass the bar exam? Which state? What did she tell us? Where did you pass the bar exam?

Mr. President. Mr. President. Mr. President. Mr. President. On the ICE arrest of... Now, here's the best we can say. These are the immutable facts that I'm going to read to you from the campaign for accountability and their bar complaint, which is up on substack.

Best we can say about Katie Zacheria. Zacharia is that she graduated Pepperine Law School. She never took the bar in any of the 50 states. She then went for two or three years with her then husband who had a job in China. She needed something to do. Spouses who are lawyers who graduated from law school often get hired by large Chinese law firms. She was hired by the Zung Loon Law Firm as a glorified paralegal. She cannot be a member of the Chinese bar.

You have to be approved by the Communist Party. this party. You have to sit for an exam. You have to speak Mandarin. They don't let people in, especially foreigners. Now, you can be a paralegal. You can be a foreign law expert. You can be a foreign law extern. You can sit in a rubber room where you won't hurt anybody and look through corporate transactional documents. And that wouldn't be practicing law. And nobody would have a problem with that. Like when you eventually decided you wanted to become a U.S. lawyer and you came back to the United States, you have to fill out a bar exam and a bar application. And you You have to account for every minute of your life since you left law school.

And before, I did. And in this period of 2011 and 2013, she would have had to write what she did. If she wrote, I practiced law in China, she'd be dead. They would have problems with that since she wasn't licensed. So I'm sure she would have had a list. I was a paralegal. I worked on documents. I was under the supervision of a Chinese lawyer, whatever.

But she never applied. Insurance. We all know we need it. But it's easy to put off because it seems complicated or expensive. That's where a select quote comes in. Their license insurance agents work for you, not one insurance company. They compare multiple carriers to find the right coverage at the lowest price. They've helped over, get this, 2 million people find coverage in nearly 40 years.

Even with health issues like high blood pressure or diabetes, they can help find the best rates for your situation. and if you're healthy, you could get same-day coverage with no medical exam. Select quote, they shop, you save. Get the right life insurance for you, for less at selectquote.com slash legal a.f. Go to selectquote.com slash legal a.f today to get started. So here's what the letter to the chief trial counsel by campaign for accountability says. They request that the state bar of California investigate whether Katie S. Zacharia violated those sections of the California business and professional code. She's a California resident. She's the White House Press Secretary. For more than a year, she described herself on national television and podcast as a lawyer and outside counsel to the World Bank and a general counsel of a not-for-profit.

She's never been admitted to practice long in California or in any other state. She's held her. herself out to the public as entitled to practice law, which California treats as a crime. She purchased a home in California. She lives in California. So says the reporting here. They refer on page two to popular information on substack saying they searched everywhere and couldn't find that she was admitted. And they focus as they should on what she has on LinkedIn as General Counsel from September 2025, then April, 26 until July 2026. And then they go through all the places where she said, I'm a lawyer, I'm a lawyer, I'm a lawyer.

Here's another clip. Former Beijing expat. How was that? Yeah. I graduated from Pepperdine School of Law. And I moved over to China, to Beijing. and I worked in a law firm called Zhonglin law firm, and I was the outside counsel to the IFC and the World Bank.

It was an interesting and exciting experience, I will say. How many years were you over there? I was over there for about three years, traveled extensively through China, southern China, western China, the Tibetan Plateau. It was actually one of the most exciting and invigorating things to see pre-COVID. I can't imagine how much has changed since then now. And now under Xi Jinping, I was there between Huzintao and Xi Jinping, so I really saw a massive shift between the two

leaders and really what the availability and excitement of Westerners being there, towards kind of a much more closed approach under Xi Jinping. How's your Mandarin? My Mandarin is okay. I wouldn't sit here and try to have a long conversation. It's gotten worse and worse as time goes on. But I can understand a good amount. And what's fun is when I'm with a group of Chinese people or in a grocery store, they're speaking and, you know, this blonde pops in and says something. And they're so excited that someone knows how to speak at least a little bit. Very cool. Well, Katie Zachariah, senior advisor to fix California Republican political strategist. And she said on the Buck Sexton show, forgive me, I've never heard of this show.

But she says on the Buck Sexton show, I was the outside counsel to the IFC and the World Bank. Continues to say that she worked for those two news organizations. Then when she was next to Donald Trump, they say she said she moved to China and that's when she passed the bar. When did you pass the bar? When I moved to China, that's a lie. Section 6126A of the California Business and Professional Code says you can't hold out that you're entitled to practice law when you are not. It is guilty as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in a county jail. She also unauthorized practice of law, 61.25.

The role of general counsel, this is from page four, is by its nature the role of the organization's chief legal advisor. She held that title for a California-based organization for a year. If she provided legal advice to fix California, reviewed a prepared contracts or other legal instruments, or acted as a lawyer in California without a license, she violated 6125, and that's also a crime. So they want this to be opened as an investigation. I'm going to go one better.

I'm going to have the Attorney General for California Rob Bonta on with me this week. We were going to talk only about the first. that the attorneys general got to 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration in the first two years and talk about all of that. But I think I'm now going to add, what about opening up a criminal investigation into the new White House press secretary? We can start doing one of those predictive market pools, you know, like, I don't know, Kalshi and the one that Cindy Sweeney's on. We can try to figure out what are the odds that she survives from now to the midterter. from now to the end of the week, from now to the midterms, and to the midterms and beyond.

I'd like to see what the betting line is on her survival. But this matters to me. I'm a member of a proud profession, and we need to root out corruption, as alleged here, by the campaign for accountability. So my next report here or on Legal AF YouTube channel, where we're looking for you to come over and hit the free subscribe button. We're about to hit one billion views on Legal AF YouTube channel. Find out what all the fuss is about. join us over there and hit that free subscribe button. Until my next report, this is Michael Popak.

In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the LegalAF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at LegalAFMTN. That's at LegalAFMTN.