Donald Trump’s new White House press secretary says it is “unknown” how much she will engage with the press, or hold briefings with reporters, as she faces mounting questions over her legal credentials.

In a brief interview with the Guardian on Thursday, Katie Zacharia detailed the whirlwind sprint to replace her predecessor Karoline Leavitt as the US president’s chief spokesperson.

Just six days after receiving a call from the White House, Zacharia stepped behind the podium for her first briefing as press secretary, in a debut that has been widely panned.

Last Wednesday, 7 October, a White House official called Zacharia and asked her to travel from Los Angeles, where she lives with her family, to Washington for a meeting. (She declined to specify who made the call.)

Zacharia made the trip the following day, before meeting officials on Pennsylvania Avenue on Friday. She was offered the job later that day – and accepted.

“I flew home, packed two bags, said hi to my kids and husband and dogs,” Zacharia told the Guardian, before returning to Washington on Sunday ahead of her first day on Monday.

But her first briefing, which Zacharia said she was “asked to do” on her second day in the job, was criticized as lackluster.

And she has since faced intense scrutiny over her claimed legal qualifications. After her debut briefing on Tuesday, reporters asked Zacharia to name the state where she passed the bar exam. “When I moved to China,” she replied.

She later told the New York Times she had “misheard” the question over the sound of Marine One on the South Lawn and thought the reporter had asked “where were you after law school”. However, she did not confirm to the Times whether she had passed the bar exam. According to her LinkedIn profile, after graduating from Pepperdine University’s law school in 2011, Zacharia was an “associate” at the Beijing law firm Zhong Lun from 2011 to 2013.

This week, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the matter, that Zacharia failed the California bar exam after graduating from law school.

The State Bar of California told the Guardian it had no record of Zacharia being licensed in the state under either her married name or her maiden name, Katie Black. While Trump has referred to Zacharia as an “attorney”, that title is reserved for those licensed to practice law.

In a different interview with the conservative outlet Human Events on Thursday, Zacharia acknowledged to the rightwing influencer Jack Posobiec that she didn’t pass the California bar. At the time, she said she was “distracted and overwhelmed and excited” to join her new husband in China, where he was working, after being in a long-distance relationship for more than a year.

A person familiar with the matter said Zacharia “stands by” referring to herself as a lawyer, and that she considered the designation a “valid title”, given her law degree and “international transactional law experience”. She did so after “consulting with other legal professionals and attorneys” about whether it was an appropriate designation, the source claimed, adding that Zacharia had “never given legal advice”; just “legal analysis”.

However, many legal experts note that “lawyer” and “attorney” are often used interchangeably. On Wednesday, the Campaign for Accountability, a non-profit watchdog organization, asked the State Bar of California to investigate whether Zacharia misled the public, and potentially violated state law, by describing herself as a lawyer.

After her time in China, there is a 10-year gap on Zacharia’s LinkedIn profile. Wired reported on Thursday that during that period she worked as an “affiliate marketer” for Beachbody, a multi-level marketing company she described to the outlet as “sort of a pyramid scheme”.

She later claims to have served as “general counsel” for Fix California, a conservative group founded by Ric Grenell, a longtime Trump ally and the special presidential envoy for special missions. The Guardian has approached both Zhong Lun and Fix California seeking additional details about Zacharia’s legal roles at the organizations.

Zacharia also said she “did not want to be seen lobbying” for the press secretary role, in her interview with the conservative outlet Human Events. Instead, she said she closely monitored the president’s social media posts before appearing on conservative talkshows to “audition” for the job.

When Trump announced that Zacharia had been tapped for the post, he described her as a “devoted fan of Maga” who has “an unblemished record of support, and has been a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning”.

Asked by the Guardian what reasons the White House gave for offering her the position, Zacharia – who previously served as an adviser to Trump Media Group, which owns the president’s Truth Social platform, and had a brief stint as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security – declined to comment.

Now the White House press secretary, she also would not clarify on Thursday how often she intended to brief the press. She said that was “unknown at this time” and that Trump “is his best spokesperson, and I will interact as needed”. “I follow the president’s lead,” Zacharia added.