Did Katie Zacharia really claim to have passed the bar exam in China?

What she actually said

Reporters asked Zacharia, at her first briefing, in what state she had passed the bar. She responded: "When I moved to China." Reporters took that to mean she had taken the Chinese bar exam while living there between 2011 and 2013. The Washington Post reported that she "said she had passed a bar exam in China."

Later, Zacharia said she had misheard the question due to noise from Marine One overhead, and that she hadn't meant to imply she took a Chinese exam at all.

Why the claim doesn't hold up

The problem is that even if she had meant it, it would have been impossible. China does have a bar exam, the National Unified Legal Professional Qualification Examination, but only Chinese citizens may sit it, under rules set by China's Ministry of Justice. Eligibility rules for China's national judicial examination in 2011, when Zacharia reportedly began working in Beijing, required candidates to hold Chinese nationality. When asked whether she could have taken and passed the exam before 2017, one expert wrote that there was "no possibility that she passed the Chinese bar exam, ever." Donald Clarke, who studies Chinese law at George Washington University, confirmed that only Chinese citizens can sit it.

Then she made it worse

In a follow-up interview on Real America's Voice, Zacharia acknowledged she sat the California bar exam after graduating from Pepperdine's law school but did not pass. She said the results were "somewhat inconsequential, because I knew I wouldn't need the bar in China." Then she said: "There's no Chinese bar. I had enough credentials, which was my law degree."

That line landed badly because it was wrong. China does have a bar exam.

What the record shows

Zacharia is not listed as a member of the bar in Texas or Washington, D.C., and after analyzing state bar association databases from all 50 states and Washington, journalist Judd Legum found that Zacharia never actually passed the qualifying legal exam anywhere. Snopes found no evidence Zacharia was a lawyer in the U.S. or in China.

So the short answer: she said it, it spread as a claim, she later denied intending it, and either way it was impossible under Chinese law. The credential she was calling on never existed.