Hannity presses Katie Zacharia on why she called herself a lawyer

Katie Zacharia sat down on friendly turf Thursday night and still ended up squirming. Sean Hannity pressed the new White House press secretary about her legal credentials during an interview on his Fox News show.

A tough line of questioning

The interview was meant to cover her first week working for President Trump. Partway through, Hannity brought up that Zacharia had dismissed the uproar over her lawyer status as a conspiracy theory.

He then pointed out that she studied at Pepperdine University and did not pass the bar exam on her first try. Looking uncomfortable, Zacharia launched into a long explanation that touched on her wedding and her family's work move to China.

Hannity cut in to ask point-blank whether she had ever sat for the exam a second or third time. She told him she had not.

Lawyer or attorney

His next question was about her choice of words: why lawyer and not attorney? Zacharia said plenty of people had told her the word lawyer was fine for her to use but attorney was not.

Hannity also cited a news report counting 15 social media posts in which she used the title attorney. Zacharia disputed that. She said those were retweets and that sharing them was not her claiming the title.

Hannity countered that most people see no real difference between the two words. Her reply to that point capped an uncomfortable exchange for a press secretary still in her first week on the job.